Denuclearise

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To rid a country, region or area of all nuclear weapons and the facilities that support them
2. To strip a nation or zone of its atomic arms and the installations used to maintain them
3. To bring about the removal of nuclear armaments and related military infrastructure from a given territory

Etymology: "Denuclearise" is a modern coinage built in the usual way: the prefix "de-", meaning "removal or reversal of", attached to "nuclearise", which itself is "nuclear" plus the verb-forming suffix "-ise". The result describes stripping nuclear weapons, or nuclear power, out of a country or region. The suffix has a long pedigree. It passed from Ancient Greek through Late Latin and Middle French into Middle English, where it became "-isen", and eventually the modern "-ise" spelling. The same suffix sits behind countless verbs such as "modernise" and "legalise", so "nuclearise" follows a well-worn path, meaning to equip with nuclear weapons or to bring nuclear power into use. The prefix "de-" comes from Latin "dē", meaning "down from" or "away", and it passed into English as a productive way to reverse an action. Attached to "nuclearise", it produced a term that gained wide currency in the twentieth century, when campaigns to rid regions of nuclear arms made the word a fixture of political debate.

Synonyms: denuclearize, disarm

Antonyms: nuclearise, rearm