excoriate
verb (used with object), ex·co·ri·at·ed, ex·co·ri·at·ing.
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Origin of excoriate
OTHER WORDS FROM excoriate
un·ex·co·ri·at·ed, adjectiveWords nearby excoriate
VOCAB BUILDER
What does excoriate mean?
Excoriate means to harshly scold, criticize, denounce, or express intense disapproval of someone or something.
Excoriating someone often involves the severest possible tone and words.
This sense of excoriate is based on its original, literal meaning: to strip off or remove the skin from an animal or person. The skin on your hands might be excoriated from hard yard work, for example.
The word flay can be used as a synonym for both the figurative and literal sense of excoriate.
In a medical context, excoriate means to scratch, scrape, or otherwise cause skin to be rubbed off or removed.
The act or an instance of excoriating is excoriation.
Example: She publicly excoriated her rival for his role in the scandal, criticizing him in the most extreme terms.
Where does excoriate come from?
The first records of excoriate come from around 1400. It comes from the Latin verb excoriāre, meaning “to strip off skin or bark,” from the Latin corium, meaning “skin” or “hide.” The prefix ex- means “without,” and the suffix -ate is used to form verbs. The figurative sense of excoriate didn’t enter widespread use until around the 1880s.
Today, when people use the word excoriate, they’re most likely talking about harshly scolding someone, and not about literally ripping someone’s skin off. But this is the underlying sense of its figurative use—a scolding so severe that it’s compared to getting your skin stripped off. There are many other words that mean about the same thing as excoriate, including flay, berate, castigate, chastise, and upbraid. Less formal synonyms include the terms rip into, tear into, and lay into.
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What are some other forms related to excoriate?
- unexcoriated (adjective)
- excoriation (noun)
What are some synonyms for excoriate?
What are some words that share a root or word element with excoriate?
What are some words that often get used in discussing excoriate?
How is excoriate used in real life?
The figurative sense of excoriate is much more commonly used than its literal sense.
Sean Payton should get a free pass from the league office to excoriate NFL officiating. The NFL has gone out of their way to earn it.
— Daryl Ruiter (@RuiterWrongFAN) September 15, 2019
Top aides in Health and Human Services excoriated government doctors for warning Americans about the new coronavirus https://t.co/yFejJtVdkR
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) September 18, 2020
Ok, I am going to get excoriated for this but, I just don't get the craze for "Frozen". https://t.co/smQKL2Afoi
— Aradia Zenobia (@Oxyzentricity) September 18, 2020
Try using excoriate!
Which of the following terms is NOT a synonym of excoriate?
A. tear into
B. berate
C. encourage
D. castigate