To make something caustic; to burn away or apply a caustic substance to something.
From Latin 'causticus' (burning, capable of burning) combined with the verb-forming suffix '-fy' (meaning 'to make or cause to become'). Caustic itself traces to Greek 'kaustikos' from 'kaein' (to burn).
In medicine's dark past, doctors would caustify wounds or tumors by applying caustic pastes and acids to burn away the tissue—a horrifying but sometimes effective treatment that lingered in surgery well into the modern era.
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