Word.ws English Dictionary

extimate

Syllables: ex·tim·ate/ˈɛkstɪmət/

extimate adjective: most distant or faraway; outermost, uttermost.

Adjective (1)

extimate (not comparable)

  1. (obsolete, rare) Most distant or faraway; outermost, uttermost.
    • [I]f we could ſee the Soule her ſelf, we could know no more by her then ſhe thus exhibits to our eye: which perſonal figuration in the extimate parts thereof, that repreſent the Body, Face and Veſtments, may be attempered to ſo fine an opacity, that it may reflect the light in more perfect colours...1659, Henry More, “1. That the Better Sort of Genii Converse in Humane Shape, the Baser Sometimes in Bestial. […]”, in The Immortality of the Soul; […], London: […] J[ames] Flesher, for William...
    • Nor then will this high flight beyond the ſupreme or extimate Heaven ſerve for any evaſion. For as much as we ſpeak of Bodies placed on this ſide of the extimate Heaven, and no Body can be found amongſt Bodies, but it will be circumſcribed by the ambient ſuperficies of the next Bodies about it...1672, [Henry More], “His Answer to the First Paragraph”, in A Brief Reply to a Late Answer to Dr. Henry More His Antidote against Idolatry. […], London: […] J. Redmayne, for Walter Kettilby […]...

Adjective (2)

extimate

  1. In the works of Jacques Lacan: simultaneously external and intimate.
    • Since [Edgar Allan] Poe is viewed by the critical tradition as simultaneously inevitable and dubious, we should strive to see him as neither in nor out of the central canon, but rather, to adopt one of [Jacques] Lacan's neologisms, as extimate with relation to it, "simultaneously the intimate...1995, Jonathan Elmer, “Introduction: The Figure of Mass Culture”, in Reading at the Social Limit: Affect, Mass Culture, & Edgar Allan Poe, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page 26
    • The romantic ‘fatal desire for mystical union’ emerges as a (non)relation to ‘some other’, to the ‘other’s alien life’[…]. In Lacanian terms this other functions like the extimate Thing, locus of the minimal difference in and more than the subject.1999, Fred Botting, “Romance of the Machine”, in Sex, Machines and Navels: Fiction, Fantasy and History in the Future Present, Manchester; New York, N.Y.: Manchester University Press, →ISBN, page 210

Examples of extimate in a sentence

  • Nor then will this high flight beyond the ſupreme or extimate Heaven ſerve for any evaſion.1672, [Henry More], “His Answer to the First Paragraph”, in A Brief Reply to a Late Answer to Dr. Henry More His Antidote against Idolatry....
  • Colour is the viſible quality of a Body, the Pythagoreans called Colour the extimate appearance of a Body; […]1704, Plutarch, “[Plutarch’s Giving an Account of Those Sentiments Concerning Nature with which Philosophers were Delighted; […]] Of...
  • The extimate is, like the social limit I have been outlining, a fold or fissure within a conceptual and discursive structure, an internal limit.1995, Jonathan Elmer, “Introduction: The Figure of Mass Culture”, in Reading at the Social Limit: Affect, Mass Culture, & Edgar Allan Poe...
  • The notion of the extimate object as the cause of desire is used to denote that the most intimate and hidden aspect of the subject is also that which is most foreign and other to ourselves.2000, Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, “The Object of Whiteness”, in Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race, London; New York, N.Y....

Synonyms of extimate

1 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

3 more antonymsFewer antonyms

Origin of extimate

From Latin extimus (“furthest; outermost”) + -ate (adjective-forming suffix), modelled after ultimate. Extimus is the superlative form of exter (“on the outside, external, outer, outward”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eǵʰs (“out”). Compare intimate.

From extimacy + -ate (adjective-forming suffix). Extimacy is a calque of French extimité (coined by the French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) in 1959–1960), probably from a blend of French externe (“external”) + intimité (“closeness, intimacy”). The English word can be analysed as a blend of external + intimate.

Questions about extimate

What does extimate mean?
Extimate means most distant or faraway; outermost, uttermost.
How do you use extimate in a sentence?
Nor then will this high flight beyond the ſupreme or extimate Heaven ſerve for any evaſion.
What part of speech is extimate?
Extimate is an adjective.
How do you pronounce extimate?
Extimate is pronounced /ˈɛkstɪmət/ (UK).

Words near extimate in the dictionary

  1. extilled
  2. extilling
  3. extills
  4. extimacies
  5. extimacy
  6. extimate
  7. extimous
  8. extimulate
  9. extimulated
  10. extimulates
  11. extimulating

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: extimate (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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