Degallicise

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Strips gallic acid or the element gallium out of a material or compound through chemical treatment
2. Extracts the gallic component from a substance so that little or none of it remains behind
3. Removes gallium or gallic compounds from something, leaving the material purified of that element

Etymology: "Degallicise" is a chemistry term built in the 20th century from the element name "gallium" plus the prefix "de-" (meaning "remove" or "reverse") and the verbal ending "-ise," which is the British spelling of "-ize." The element itself was named by the French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who discovered it spectroscopically in 1875 and named it after Gaul, the Latin "Gallia," which he related to France, his homeland; the Latin "gallus" also means "rooster," a pun some have linked to the name, though the naming story is usually given as a tribute to France. Because gallium is a metal used in semiconductors, LEDs and some specialist alloys, chemists sometimes need to strip it out of a material so that the product is free of it. The prefix "de-" does the same job in many other chemical verbs, such as "decarburise" for removing carbon from iron.