Last night, the word “decorticate” came to my mind.
I wondered a bit : “décortiquer” is the French and I was not so sure that “englishizing” it was good enough to have a real English word.
This morning, I checked : yes, it’s English but, apparently, it belongs in the medical world, with the sense of dissecting.
To decorticate – most commonly named to shell – is very often used when it comes to remove the… shell, of course, of shellfish… makes sense, right ? But also… and we’re getting closer… for the practice of removing the bark from tree trunks. In France, in Portugal (the biggest producer), the bark from a certain species of oaks is used -still used, but less used as plastic is coming stronger – to make cork…
Cork… decorticate… got it ? They are all latin-rooted from “cortex,” meaning “outer layer.”
It’s been extended in the “abstract” world to mean open or remove the outside layer/coating/envelope/shell and reveal the inside, the core.
It may not seem like a very frequent word in a mundane level of language… although it feels to me like it’s all I have been doing all my life !!!
Remove the ignorance or preconceived conceptions about things to get a little deeper, grab a better understanding… and when you understand better, you remember better too !
This is exactly what I propose in the Dare Speak French programs : decorticate the French, compare it to its English counterpart if possible, shed light and simplify. And I love it !!!