1769: decollate Oct 18, 2019

There are plenty of times when a words—based off spelling and or pronunciation—may have two or more separate meanings. Sometimes this can happen with doublets—two words with the same origin but different developments—but in the case of 'decollate', there were two origins for two words that happen to look the same and mean similar things. 'Decollate' meaning 'behead' is related to 'collar' (i.e. 'neck'), or also meaning 'to tear pieces of paper'. However, the first meaning comes from the Latin 'collum' meaning 'neck' whereas the second meaning comes ultimately from a participle of the the Latin 'confer', 'collat-', meaning 'bring together'. The negative prefix for both is the same though.

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