Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On
Evelyn wrote to say that
she had come across a strange and unfamiliar word last week while browsing
through the offerings in her local library’s semi-annual book sale. The word
was quassation.
The word is strange and
unfamiliar to most of us because it is obsolete. When the word was last commonly
used, somewhere around the late 19th century, it meant crushing
medications into smaller pieces, or grinding vegetative material into pieces in
order to extract their beneficial ingredients.
The word came from the
Latin quassatio, a violent shaking,
and later expanded into crushing or bruising. A close relative was the
adjective quassative, given to
shaking and trembling.
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