English

Verb

desecate ‎(third-person singular simple present desecates, present participle desecating, simple past and past participle desecated)

1. (obsolete, rare) To cut, as with a scythe; to mow.
   • 1798, Edmund Burke, The Beauties of the Late Right Hon. Edmund Burke, volume 2:

     So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and desecated public good which has ever been conferred on mankind.

   • 1841, The Methodist Quarterly Review, volume 23, page 348:

     Now, as we have already remarked, it is the province of the eclectic philosophy to search out the central truth of each system and desecate it from the mass of commingled truth and error.

Etymology 2

Verb

desecate ‎(third-person singular simple present desecates, present participle desecating, simple past and past participle desecated)

1. Obsolete spelling of desiccate
   • 1831 December 1, “Cousin's Philosophy”, in American Quarterly Review, volume 20, page 294:

     […] and which new element will, by a sort of elective attraction, secrete and desecate from ore and alloy, all the truth that either has.

   • 1847, John Murray, A Hand-book for Travellers in Spain, page 403:

     Dry, searching, desecating, and cutting, this assassin breath of death pierces through flesh and bone to the marrow; hence the careful way in which the natives cover their months, the women with handkerchiefs, the men by muming themselves up in their cloaks, embozandos en las capas.

   • 1857, Edward H. Barton, The Cause and Prevention of Yellow Fever at New Orleans and Other Cities in America:

     It is well known that the high temperature of sandy deserts, neven produces fever; that the fiery blast of the Harmattan which desecates the fluids, and withers the whole aspect of nature, puts an immediate end to fever, and that on the coast of Africa, after the rainy seasons, they welcome this blast, as with it the recovery of invalids commences.

Latin

Verb

dēsecāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of dēsecō