Degrease

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To eliminate oily substances from surfaces or objects by using cleaning techniques or agents
2. The act of cleaning to remove grease or oil residues from various materials, often involving specific solutions or methods
3. To cleanse a surface by taking away accumulated greasy or oily matter

Etymology: "Degrease" is a plain formation: the prefix "de-", a Latin element meaning "down" or "away from," attached to the existing English noun "grease." Its sense is simply "to remove grease," the reverse of greasing something. The prefix is used this way in many English verbs, such as "defrost" or "decode," so the word is a transparent piece of English word-building rather than an inherited or borrowed term. The base word has a longer and more surprising route. "Grease" came into English through Anglo-Norman "grece," which was itself descended from Vulgar Latin "crassia," a formation from Latin "crassus," meaning "thick" or "fat." So the same Latin root that gives us "crass" in its original sense of thick, coarse matter also lies behind the grease that "degrease" removes. Reaching back to that Latin adjective shows that the word for the oily residue was once a description of thickness rather than of a substance.

Synonyms: clean, remove grease, purify, sanitize, decontaminate