Word.ws English Dictionary

excorticate

/ɪkˈskɔː(ɹ)tɪkeɪt/

excorticate verb: to strip of bark, shell or skin.

Verb

excorticate (third-person singular simple present excorticates, present participle excorticating, simple past and past participle excorticated)

  1. (archaic, obsolete) To strip of bark, shell or skin.
    • Moſs is to be rubb'd and ſcrap'd off with ſome fit inſtrument of Wood, which may not excorticate the Tree, or with a piece of Hair-cloth after a ſobbing Rain: [...]1664, J[ohn] E[velyn], Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions. […], London: […] Jo[hn] Martyn, and Ja[mes] Allestry, printers to the Royal...
    • The sap-wood of the excorticated winter-felled timber, kept in piles in his Majesty's yards, has rotted1821, John Knowles, An Inquiry Into the Means which Have Been Taken to Preserve the British Navy […]

Synonyms of excorticate

Forms of excorticate

third-person singular presentexcorticates
present participleexcorticating
past participleexcorticated
pastexcorticated

Origin of excorticate

From Latin ex (“out”), from cortex, corticis (“bark”).

Words formed from excorticate

Questions about excorticate

What does excorticate mean?
Excorticate means to strip of bark, shell or skin.
What part of speech is excorticate?
Excorticate is a verb.
How do you pronounce excorticate?
Excorticate is pronounced /ɪkˈskɔː(ɹ)tɪkeɪt/.
What is the past tense of excorticate?
The past tense of excorticate is excorticated.

Words near excorticate in the dictionary

  1. excoriators
  2. excoriosis
  3. excorporate
  4. excorporation
  5. excorporations
  6. excorticate
  7. excorticated
  8. excorticates
  9. excorticating
  10. excortication
  11. excortications

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: excorticate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-excorticate.wav.

Cite this entry: “excorticate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/excorticate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.