vellicate
Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- verb to touch (a body part) lightly so as to excite the surface nerves and cause uneasiness, laughter, or spasmodic movements
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- verb-transitive To twitch; to cause to twitch convulsively.
Examples
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But our baths now inflame, vellicate, and distress; and the air which we draw is a mixture of air and water, disturbs the whole body, tosses and displaces every atom, till we quench the fiery particles and allay their heat.
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Some think these almonds have a penetrating, abstersive quality, are able to cleanse the face, and clear it from the common freckles; and therefore, when they are eaten, by their bitterness vellicate and fret the pores, and by that means draw down the ascending vapors from the head.
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There can be no doubt that bodies which are rough and angular, rouse and vellicate the organs of feeling, causing a sense of pain, which consists in the violent tension or contraction of the muscular fibres.
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Thus, if you vellicate the throat with a feather, nausea is produced; if you wound it with a penknife, pain is induced, but not sickness.
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I want this ennui to finally gormandize me, obliterate me, vellicate me until my bones break from the shaking.
Note
The word 'vellicate' comes from a Latin word meaning 'to pluck, pull'.
