Word.ws English Dictionary

expiscate

expiscate verb: to fish out; to find out by skill or laborious investigation; to search out or rummage (for information).

Verb

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

  1. (archaic, formal, transitive) To fish out; to find out by skill or laborious investigation; to search out or rummage (for information)
    • Mathematics may be separated into two divisions, one of which expiscates principles or methods, and the other rules or applications.1860, John Pringle Nichol, A Cyclopaedia of Physical Sciences
    • as if every man had to expiscate for himself from the beginning a system of religious belief1866, William Lindsay Alexander, Our Lord's Commendation of the study of Holy Scripture

Forms of expiscate

third-person singular presentexpiscates
present participleexpiscating
past participleexpiscated
pastexpiscated

Origin of expiscate

From Latin expiscatus, past participle of expiscari (“to fish out”), from ex (“out”) + piscari (“to fish”), piscis (“fish”). By surface analysis, ex- + Latin pisc- + -ate.

Questions about expiscate

What does expiscate mean?
Expiscate means to fish out; to find out by skill or laborious investigation; to search out or rummage (for information).
What part of speech is expiscate?
Expiscate is a verb.
What is the past tense of expiscate?
The past tense of expiscate is expiscated.

Words near expiscate in the dictionary

  1. expirogram
  2. expirograms
  3. expiry
  4. expiry date
  5. expiry dates
  6. expiscate
  7. expiscated
  8. expiscates
  9. expiscating
  10. expiscation
  11. expiscations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: expiscate (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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