different between ecdysis vs ecdysiast

English

From Ancient Greek ??????? (ékdusis, “stripping”), from ????? (ekdú?, “I take off”), from ?? (ek, “out”) + ??? (dú?, “I get in”).

ecdysis (countable and uncountable, plural ecdyses)

The shedding of an outer layer of skin in snakes and certain other animals; moulting
The shedding of an exoskeleton, as in insects and crustaceans.

Coined by H. L. Mencken from ecdysis (on the model of enthusiast etc.).

ecdysiast (plural ecdysiasts)

An erotic dancer who removes their clothes as a form of entertainment; a stripper.
- 1973, Kyril Bonfiglioli, Don't Point That Thing at Me, Penguin 2001, p. 79:
  I had never seen an ecdysiast before; toward the end she was wearing nothing but seven beads, four of them sweat.
- 2004, Chrysti the Wordsmith, Verbivore's Feast: A Banquet of Word and Phrase Origins, Farcountry Press, p. 107:
  However, the Queen of Ecdysiasts, Gypsy Rose Lee, was not amused. In a 1940 interview, she leveled her guns against Mencken: "Ecdysiast, he calls me! Why, the man... has been reading books! Dictionaries! We don't wear feathers and molt them off... What does he know about stripping?"

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