Word.ws English Dictionary

exolete

UK/ˈɛksəliːt/

exolete adjective: that has gone out of use; disused, obsolete.

Adjective

exolete (not comparable)

  1. (obsolete) That has gone out of use; disused, obsolete.
    • A Greeke inscription which I could not understand by reason of the antiquity of those exolete letters.1611, Thomas Coryat, Coryat’s Crudities, page 178
    • In which [apothecaries’ shops] many…exolete, things out of date are to be had.1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, part II, section iv, member i, subsection 5
  2. (obsolete) That has lost its virtue; effete, insipid.
    • The vulgar Carpobalſame…being…faint, rancid, exolet.1657, Richard Tomlinson (translator), Jean de Renou (author), A Medicinal Diſpenſatory, page 283
    • How exolete Blood falls asunder.1676, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, XI, page 708
  3. (obsolete) (of flowers) Faded.
    • Exolete, faded, or withered, as flowers.1730–6, Nathan Bailey, An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (folio edition), “Exolete”

Examples of exolete in a sentence

  • Paganism is ridiculous, Judaism exolete.1651, George Digby, chapter IV, in Letters between Lord George Digby and Sir Kenelm Digby, Knt. concerning Religion, page 125:
  • I declaimed…against the use of exolete and interpolated repetitions of old fables.1705, Abraham Cowley, translated by Nahum Tate, Cowley’s History of Plants: A Poem in Six Books, published 1795, Preface, page 20:
  • These Exoticks…are now and then deprived partly of their virtues and exolete.1684, an unknown translator of Théophile Bonet (author), Mercurius Compitalitius, chapter x, page 358

Forms of exolete

alternative formexolet

Origin of exolete

From the Latin exolētus, the perfect passive participle of exolescō, from ex + olēscō (from oleō + -ēscō).

Questions about exolete

What does exolete mean?
Exolete means that has gone out of use; disused, obsolete.
How do you use exolete in a sentence?
Paganism is ridiculous, Judaism exolete.
What part of speech is exolete?
Exolete is an adjective.
How do you pronounce exolete?
Exolete is pronounced /ˈɛksəliːt/ (UK).

Words near exolete in the dictionary

  1. exokinases
  2. exolabial
  3. exolang
  4. exolangs
  5. exolet
  6. exolete
  7. exolevanase
  8. exolevanases
  9. exolever
  10. exolevers
  11. exolife

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: exolete (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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