the.com/discharge
the moment something held finally lets go, electric, fluid, or honorably done with you.
means To release or let go of something — whether that's electricity, fluid, a duty, a patient from hospital, or a person from a job or military service.
from From Old French 'descharger,' to unload or relieve of a burden — built from the prefix 'des-' (undoing, reversal) plus 'charger,' to load. That 'charger' traces back to Late Latin 'carricare,' to load a wagon, from 'carrus,' a wheeled cart — the same ancestor that gives us 'cargo' and 'charge' itself. So at root, to discharge is simply to take the load off: the wagon emptied, the burden set down, the thing finally let go.
- military origin
- honorable discharge dates to American Revolutionary War records
- lightning math
- a single bolt discharges around one billion volts
- capacitor danger
- stored charge can shock you long after unplugging
- river meaning
- discharge measures water volume flowing past per second
- static spark
- doorknob zaps are tiny visible electrical discharges
love canal niagara falls — chemical discharge from hooker chemical company contaminated residential neighborhood in 1978
deepwater horizon 2010 gulf — oil well discharge released 4.9 million barrels into gulf of mexico