Predation/Depredation

Dear Word Detective: My love of words and their history has made me a sort of nerdy celebrity among my friends (we are grad students in Environmental Education, so we’re mostly science nerds). Usually when my pals come to me with word queries, I’m able to use a little investigative work (a dictionary and your column, basically) and then stun them with my etymological prowess. Alas, I have been stumped. If “predation” and “depredation” mean the same thing, why do we have the two different words? Why does one have that confusing “de-” prefix? Did they always mean the same thing, or did they diverge at one point? Is “depredation” in any way related to “deprive” instead of “prey”? — Crysta.

Well, lookie there. Signs of intelligent life on Earth. Good to see, because lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Sparta, inspired (if that’s the right word) by some silly movie made from a comic book. (Excuse me, “graphic novel.”) Curious, I actually looked up the movie on Wikipedia, and they had posted a big “spoiler warning” before the plot summary because it apparently reveals the super-secret ending of the Battle of Thermopylae. I guess if that’s the sort of thing you like, that’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t know.

“Predation” and “depredation” do mean essentially the same thing in standard usage, “plundering, pillaging, ravaging, exploitation, destruction or ruthless consumption.” Since you and your friends are students in Environmental Education, you are no doubt aware that “predation” is also used in scientific contexts to mean “the preying by one animal upon another; the behavior of a predator,” a usage which lacks the moral judgment implicit in the more general use of the word.

The root of both words, the Latin “praeda,” meaning “booty or prey,” is indeed shared with our English “prey.” This “praeda” begat the Latin verb “praedari,” meaning “to plunder, to rob, to make prey of,” which eventually produced our English “predation” (appearing around 1500) and “depredation” (1626). Neither of these words is related to “deprive,” which harks back to the Latin “privare,” meaning “to isolate or deprive” (also the source of “private,” from the sense of “a single person”).

As to how “predation” and “depredation” can mean the same thing when the prefix “de” usually plays the same negative role as “un” (as in “depopulate”), it’s time to blame those tricky Latin prefixes again. In “depredation,” the prefix “de” means not “un” but “thoroughly, completely,” a role it also plays in words such as “denude” (make completely naked), “declare” (make completely clear), and “despoil” (thoroughly ruin). So “depredation” means “utter, total predation,” damaging or destroying something severely.