debridement (n.)

"headpiece of a horse's harness," used to govern and restrain the animal, Old English bridel "a bridle, a restraint," related to bregdan "move quickly," from Proto-Germanic *bregdilaz (see braid (v.)). The etymological notion would be that which one "pulls quickly." Cognate with Old Frisian bridel, Middle Dutch breydel, Dutch breidel, Old High German bridel. A bridle-path (1806) is one wide enough to be traveled on horseback but not with a carriage.

active word-forming element in English and in many verbs inherited from French and Latin, from Latin de "down, down from, from, off; concerning" (see de), also used as a prefix in Latin, usually meaning "down, off, away, from among, down from," but also "down to the bottom, totally" hence "completely" (intensive or completive), which is its sense in many English words.

As a Latin prefix it also had the function of undoing or reversing a verb's action, and hence it came to be used as a pure privative — "not, do the opposite of, undo" — which is its primary function as a living prefix in English, as in defrost (1895), defuse (1943), de-escalate (1964), etc. In some cases, a reduced form of dis-.