expiscate

English

Etymology

From Latin expiscatus, past participle of expiscari (“to fish out”), from ex (“out”) + piscari (“to fish”), piscis (“fish”).

Verb

expiscate (third-person singular simple present expiscates, present participle expiscating, simple past and past participle expiscated)

(transitive, formal, archaic) To fish out; to find out by skill or laborious investigation; to search out.
- 1860, John Pringle Nichol, A Cyclopaedia of Physical Sciences:
  Mathematics may be separated into two divisions, one of which expiscates principles or methods, and the other rules or applications.
- 1866, William Lindsay Alexander, Our Lord's Commendation of the study of Holy Scripture:
  as if every man had to expiscate for himself from the beginning a system of religious belief
- November 1893, Robert Louis Stevenson, Vailima Letters, Chapter XXXIV
  I am in a fair way to expiscate my family history

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “expiscate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Latin

Participle

expiscāte

vocative masculine singular of expiscātus