de-orbit v.

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-.

late 14c., "the eye-socket, the bony cavity of the skull which contains the eye," from Old French orbite or directly from Medieval Latin orbita, a transferred use of Latin orbita "wheel track, beaten path, rut, course" (see orb). The astronomical sense of "circular or elliptical path of a planet or comet" (recorded in English from 1690s; later also of artificial satellites) was in classical Latin and was revived in Gerard of Cremona's translation of Avicenna. The Old English word for "eye socket" was eaghring.