expiate

Verb

expiate (third-person singular simple present expiates, present participle expiating, simple past and past participle expiated)

1. (ambitransitive) To atone or make reparation for.
   • The Treasurer obliged himself to expiate the injury.1702–1704, Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon, (please specify |book=I to XVI), in The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed...
   • At laſt, he diſtinctly pronounced theſe three words, LET THIS EXPIATE! And then, his head ſinking on his pillow, he expired; […]1748, [Samuel Richardson], “Letter CXIII”, in Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: […], volume VII, London: […] S[amuel] Richardson; [a]nd sold by John Osborn, […], →OCLC, page 415
2. (transitive) To make amends or pay the penalty for.
   • He had only to live and expiate in solitude the crimes which he had committed.1876, Jules Verne, translated by Stephen W. White, The Mysterious Island, part 2, chapter 17
   • And when it was required of him by the rigid laws of a haphazard justice, which in retrospect seems like every night of the week, he pressed his limp forelock into a filthy washbasin, clutched a tap in each throbbing hand, and expiated a string of crimes he didn't know he had committed until they...1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy
3. (obsolete, transitive) To relieve or cleanse of guilt.
   • […] and Epimenides was brought from Crete to expiate the city.1829, Pierre Henri Larcher, Larcher's Notes on Herodotus, volume 2, page 195
4. (transitive) To purify with sacred rites.
   • Neither let there be found in thee any that shal expiate his ſonne, or daughter, making them to paſſe through the fyre: or that demandeth of ſouthſayers, and obſerueth dreames and diuinations, neither let there be a ſorcerer,1609, The Holie Bible, […] (Douay–Rheims Bible), Doway: Laurence Kellam, […], →OCLC, Deuteronomie 18:10, page 435
5. (transitive) To wind up, bring to an end.
   • But when in thee times forrwes I behould, / Then look I death my daies ſhould expiate.1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 22”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC, lines 3–4