The Collaborative International Dictionary
Decorticate \De*cor"ti*cate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p.
Decorticated; p. pr. & vb. n. Decorticating.] [L.
decorticatus, p. p. of decorticare to bark; de- + cortex
bark.]
To divest of the bark, husk, or exterior coating; to husk; to
peel; to hull. ``Great barley dried and decorticated.''
--Arbuthnot.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
vb. 1 (context transitive English) To peel or remove the bark, husk, or outer layer from something. 2 (context transitive English) To surgically remove the surface layer, membrane, or fibrous cover of an organ etc.
WordNet
v. remove the outer layer of; "decorticate a tree branch"
remove the cortex of (an organ)
Usage examples of "decorticate".
Pupils fixed, body insensitive, and sometimes locked into decorticate postures.
He hoped to travel to California to watch the crop being decorticated, seeing himself as a benefactor to mankind who would enable people to work shorter hours and have more time for "spiritual development.
By 1916, USDA Bulletin 404 predicted that a decorticating and harvesting machine would be developed, and hemp would again be America's largest agricultural industry.
In 1938, magazines such as Popular Mechanics, and Mechanical Engineering introduced a new generation of investors to fully operational hemp decorticating devices.
These industrial barons and financiers knew that machinery to cut, bale, decorticate (separate the fiber from the high-cellulose hurd), and process hemp into paper or plastics was becoming available in the mid-1930s.
With the exception of one particularly gruesome experiment in which decorticate cats had supposedly learned how to navigate a maze after having digested their mommy's and daddy's RNA.
Nobody wants to fund grants to study the eyeblink reflex in decorticate lobsters.
The lottery ticket suckers, decorticated by hope and numerology, may as well be victims of Post-Timequake Apathy.
We all know what the dummies will do” – he gestured at the hummocks in which the decorticated men were cradled – “and we all know what the new people will ask.