To remove ticks from (an animal or surface); to clean of parasitic ticks.
From de- 'remove' + tick. Tick itself is Germanic in origin, probably from an imitative root. Detick is a straightforward verb formation following standard English patterns, likely emerging in agricultural or veterinary contexts in the 19th-20th centuries.
Deticking is crucial farm work—a single cow can carry hundreds of ticks that spread disease, so farmers developed specific techniques and even chemicals just to manage them. The word shows how practical agricultural problems create new vocabulary.
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