expiate

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin expiātus, the past participle of expiō (“to make amends, atone for”);^{[2][3][4][5][6]} the OED and the Shorter Oxford name the participial stem expiāt-.^[7][8] The Latin verb is formed from ex-, which Barnhart and the American Heritage Dictionary read as intensive,^[3][9] and piō (“to seek to appease by sacrifice”),^[7][10][4] from pius (“devout”),^[7][10][9] the source of pious.^[10][4] Barnhart allows for some influence from Middle French expier, and also for a back-formation from the earlier expiation, which is recorded from before 1425.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

To extinguish someone's rage by suffering it to the full, or to end one's sorrows by death: 1594, in Marlowe and Nashe's Dido.^[7][3] Merriam-Webster dates this first sense, to put an end to, to about 1500;^[5] Etymonline dates the verb to about 1600,^[2] and Dictionary.com to 1585–95.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The first sense, ending a passion or a life, died out in the early 17th century.^[7][3][8] In the 1600s it meant to perform acts of atonement (Holland's Livy, 1600), to purify a person or a city by sacred rites (Florio's Montaigne, 1603), to avert a threatened evil by ceremonies (the King James Bible, 1611), and to wipe out the guilt of a sin (Bishop Hall, 1608).^[7] Bacon's use before 1626 widened it to making amends for a wrong in general,^[7][3] while from 1665 it could mean simply to pay the penalty for an offence.^[7] Johnson (1755) gives the two senses still alive in his day: to annul the guilt of a crime by later acts of piety, and to avert the threats of prodigies.^[11] The purifying and averting senses have since gone out of use, leaving atonement and penalty.^[7][5]

Timeline

• 1594 – to extinguish rage by suffering it, to end sorrow by death (obsolete by 1616).^[7][3]
• 1600 – intransitive, to atone or perform acts of expiation (obsolete by 1827), in Holland's Livy.^[7][3]
• 1603 – to cleanse a person or a city of guilt by religious ceremonies (obsolete by 1655).^[7]
• 1608 – to do away with the guilt of a sin; to offer propitiation for it.^[7]
• 1611 – to avert evil by religious ceremonies, in the King James Bible (obsolete except in historical use).^[7]
• before 1616 – adjective, of an appointed time, fully come, in Shakespeare's Richard III.^[7]
• before 1626 – to make amends or reparation for.^[7][3]
• 1665 – to pay the penalty of.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To atone for a sin or wrong, doing away with its guilt; to make amends for it: He spent his last years trying to expiate the crimes of his youth.^[12][5][7]
2. To pay the penalty for an offence: The conspirators expiated their treason on the scaffold.^[5][7][8]
3. (obsolete) To purify a person or place with sacred rites (1603–55).^[7][5][8]
4. (obsolete) To put an end to pain or rage, by suffering it to the full or by death (1594–1616).^[7][5][8]
5. (obsolete except in historical use) To avert a threatened evil or the omen of a prodigy by religious ceremonies (1611–1865).^[7][8][11]

Adjective

1. (obsolete) Of an appointed time, fully come: Shakespeare's “the hour of death is expiate”.^[5][7][8]

Word family

• expiator
• expiable
• unexpiated

Related words

• expiation
• expiatory
• pious
• piety

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins