eunuchate

English

Etymology

Latin eunuchatus, perfect participle of eunucho.

Verb

eunuchate (third-person singular simple present eunuchates, present participle eunuchating, simple past and past participle eunuchated)

1. (transitive, dated) To make a eunuch of; to castrate (a man).
   • 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia epidemica:

     That camphire eunuchates or begets in men an impotency unto venery, observation will hardly confirm; and we have found it to fail in cocks and hens, though given for many daies; which was a more favourable triall then that of Scaliger, when he gave it unto a bitch that was proud.

   • 1863, Vindex, Rattlesnakes and Copperheads: Or, Rhymes for the Times:

     I have enveavored to show, neither do they condemn Polygamy, Eunuchating, the Metempsychosis, and I might have added, the atrocious cruelties of the ancient Circus or Amphetheater, though St. Paul obtains some of his most striking Metaphors from that source.

   • 1938, Mary Cogan Bromage, “The Irish Literary Censorship”, in Quarterly Review: A Journal of University Perspectives, page 80:

     The first draft's definition of indecency, which would have eunuchated literature entirely, was changed to read: "the word 'indecent' shall be construed as including suggestive of, or inciting to sexual immorality or unnatural vice or likely in any other similar way to corrupt or deprave."