Ablactacioun

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The gradual process of taking a young child off breast milk ; a horticultural method of grafting in which a shoot is joined to a rootstock before being cut from its parent plant
2. Weaning a baby or young mammal from its mother's milk ; a plant-grafting technique in which a branch is attached to another plant before separation from its original stem
3. The act of weaning an infant from nursing ; a way of uniting two plants by grafting one onto another while it remains attached to its source

Etymology: Ablactacioun is a Middle English word for weaning, the moment a child is taken off the breast. It comes from Late Latin "ablactatio", formed from the Latin prefix "ab-" meaning "away from" and "lactare", "to suckle", which itself derives from "lac", "milk". So the word literally describes taking milk away. English borrowed it in the late 1300s or early 1400s, around the time medical and scholarly writers were drawing heavily on Latin vocabulary. The spelling shows its path: the "-acioun" ending reflects the Anglo-French and Latin "-atio" nouns that English adopted in great numbers, and the word was used in medical and household writing about infant care. Its prominence was short-lived, however, and it dropped out of common use as plainer words such as "weaning" took over from Old English roots.