de

preposition

1. from; of (used in French, Spanish, and Portuguese personal names, originally to indicate place of origin): Comte de Rochambeau; Don Ricardo de Aragón.

1. Delaware (approved especially for use with zip code).
2. destroyer escort.

1. dilation and extraction.

preposition

1. dei (used in Italian names as an elided form of dei): de’ Medici.

1. a prefix occurring in loanwords from Latin (decide); also used to indicate privation, removal, and separation (dehumidify), negation (demerit; derange), descent (degrade; deduce), reversal (detract), intensity (decompound).Compare di-², dis-¹.

1. Doctor of Engineering.
2. driver education.

1. of; from: occurring as part of some personal names and originally indicating place of originSimon de Montfort; D’Arcy; de la Mare

the internet domain name for

1. Germany

abbreviation for

1. (formerly in Britain) Department of Employment
2. Delaware

prefix forming verbs and verbal derivatives

1. removal of or from something specifieddeforest; dethrone
2. reversal of somethingdecode; decompose; desegregate
3. departure fromdecamp

Latin adverb and preposition of separation in space, meaning “down from, off, away from,” and figuratively “concerning, by reason of, according to;” from PIE demonstrative stem *de- (see to).

active word-forming element in English and in many words inherited from French and Latin, from Latin de “down, down from, from, off; concerning” (see de), also used as a prefix in Latin usually meaning “down, off, away, from among, down from,” but also “down to the bottom, totally” hence “completely” (intensive or completive), which is its sense in many English words. As a Latin prefix it also had the function of undoing or reversing a verb’s action, and hence it came to be used as a pure privative — “not, do the opposite of, undo” — which is its primary function as a living prefix in English, as in defrost (1895), defuse (1943), etc. Cf. also dis-.

abbr.

1. dilation and evacuation

pref.

1. Do or make the opposite of; reverse:decomposition.
2. Remove or remove from:deoxygenation.
3. Reduce; degrade:decholesterolization.