exuviate

Verb

exuviate (third-person singular simple present exuviates, present participle exuviating, simple past and past participle exuviated)

1. (ambitransitive, rare) To shed or cast off a covering, especially a skin; to slough; to molt (moult).
   • Like any arthropod encased in a rigid exoskeleton, a trilobite must periodically moult, or exuviate, in order to grow.1996, Rolf Ludvigsen, chapter 4, in Life in Stone: A Natural History of British Columbia's Fossils, →ISBN, page 55
   • Although multicultural societies are difficult to manage, they need not become a political nightmare and might even become exciting if we exuviate our long traditional preoccupation with a culturally homogeneous and tightly structured polity and allow them instead to intimate their own appropriate...2002, Bhikhu C. Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory, →ISBN, page 344

   Synonyms:

   moult, molt, slough