exsquamate and desquamate and exstercorate and exsuptory

After having disposed of the more familiar words beginning with "expi," I will turn in this essay to a few colorful but less noteworthy English words, such as expilate and expiscate, which also begin with "expi." My eyes also fell on the Oxford Latin Dictionary ("OLD") for Latin words beginning with "expi" which we might be able to exploit in our project of re-inventing English.

Let's begin with expilate, expilation, expilator. The basic word is expilate, derived from the Latin and meaning "to rob, plunder, despoil." One can, in Latin, expilate a person or property. The only attestation of the verb expilate listed in the OED comes from 1627: "What peace was under the Herodian temple?..Pilate would expilate the treasures of it for aquae ductae." It is significant to me that so many new English words, at least if the OED is to be trusted, emerged in the first few decades of the 17th century. I really think it was the glorious reign of Elizabeth (1559-1603) that changed not only the spirit of the sceptered isle (through, for example, the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588) but also emboldened English people to expand the rather limited scope of the English language. Shakespeare, of course, was one who pressed language to its limits in this period, but many other people in the early 17th century did the same. A new spirit requires a new language.

Thus, if to expilate means to pillage or plunder, expilation means the act of pillaging. A "lation" synonym is "spoilation." From 1597: "Whence...proceeds This rav'nous expilation of the state.." A 1675 translation of Machiavelli's Prince speaks about "Taxes and expilations in the Kingdom of Naples." A technical legal meaning of expilation existed in the Civil (not common) law: "the act of withdrawing, or diverting, something belonging to an inheritance, before any body had declared himself heir thereof." In other words, in the civil law tradition the gap of time between the death of a person and the heir's possession of the property made the property not be "owned" by either. Thus, a taking of the property wouldn't be denominated a stealing or robbery, but rather an expilation.

A Small Digression

It is interesting to me that the OLD has two entries for the word expilo. The first means to "plunder" while the second means "to remove hair from." Of course we have the word depilation in English to capture this concept, but why couldn't we also use the word expilation for the same purpose? A depilatory removes hair. "Honey, hand me the expilatory, please." I wonder what she would give him? If we can exfoliate to remove the scales or splinters, why can't we expilate to remove hairs? Of course, a synonym for exfoliate is desquamate (to remove skin) and not exsquamate. But, hark. The word exsquamate does appear in the OED, with one attestation (1684) to mean "to scale off or come off in scales; to desquamate; exfoliate." If you don't believe me, look it up--right between exsputory and exstercorate.

Oops. I need now to say a word about exsputory and exstercorate. To exspute means to spit out. I think it is a wonderful word, in fact. From 1704: "I spit blood, and exputed a viscous tough Matter." One could talk about actors' exputing lines or an outraged person exputing words. And expuition is the spitting out of something. I think it is a far more powerful and useful word than "spit out." To exstercorate means "to eject as dung," though no good examples are given of its usage in the OED . Perhaps we have a new term that we can place near "poop bags" in parks, where you have to clean up after your dog. I can just see the sign: "After exstercoration, please throw away."

Finally, Expiscate

Though the OLD has two words, expingo (to depict by painting) and expinso (to grind), I can't think of immediate ways to use them in English. Perhaps we could say that someone was expicted rather than depicted, but I am not yet convinced. I love the wordexpiscate and its relatives expiscatory, expiscation and expiscator because the picture created by the words immediately speaks with power. It comes from the Latin expiscor, which means "to angle for information." Literally, it means "to fish out" something. From Blackwell's Magazine in 1831: "Should we observe any farther impertinence on his part, we shall expiscate it." "Have they ever expiscated one intelligible reason for his conduct?" Thus, an expiscator is an investigator. One of the so-called "sexy jobs" of the future is a private investigator. Private investigators have all sorts of access to peoples' secrets. They fish it all out, sometimes literally. Let's finish this with a quotation from Carlyle:

"By innumerable confrontations and expiscatory questions, through entanglements, doublings, and windings that fatigue eye and soul, this most involute of lies is finally winded off."

My new acquaintance Robert Perske is an expert on the expiscatory ways of police investigators and investigations.

Conclusion

Wasn't it Jesus who told Peter that henceforth he would be a "fisher or men?" Could we call this Peter's expiscatory mission? Be sure to distinguish it from an episcopal mission and, even more, from an extispicine mission. But I am stirring things up here now, and so I will quit, with thanks to the dictionaries for providing these hours of diversion and learning.

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