execrate
Americanverb (used with object)
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execrates,
present (3rd person singular)
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execrated,
past participle, past
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execrating
present participle
-
to detest utterly; abhor; abominate.
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to curse; imprecate evil upon; damn; denounce.
He execrated all who opposed him.
verb (used without object)
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execrates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
execrated,
past participle, past
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execrating
present participle
verb
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(tr) to loathe; detest; abhor
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(tr) to profess great abhorrence for; denounce; deplore
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to curse (a person or thing); damn
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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execratesimple
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execratessimple
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have execratedperfect
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has execratedperfect
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am execratingprogressive
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are execratingprogressive
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is execratingprogressive
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have been execratingperfect progressive
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has been execratingperfect progressive
Past
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execratedsimple
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had execratedperfect
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was execratingprogressive
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were execratingprogressive
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had been execratingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of execrate
1555–65; < Latin ex ( s ) ecrātus (past participle of ex ( s ) ecrārī to curse), equivalent to ex- ex- 1 + secr- (combining form of sacrāre to consecrate; see sacrament) + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
Just when you thought you knew every word in the book for hate, here's a new one: execrate. The word means to despise or also to curse. Broken down to its Latin root, the word execrate means the opposite of being sacred or devoted to. When you execrate something, you are cursing it instead of making it holy. The word is not used all that often. If you say to someone, "I execrate you!" they might think you're casting an evil spell on them. Which in a way, by cursing them, you are.
Vocabulary lists containing execrate
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense.
From "1984" by George Orwell
He now forgave all nature, and found none but himself to execrate.
From Tales from the German Comprising specimens from the most celebrated authors by Various
And just as I reverence this, do I execrate, with all my heart's indignation, a corrupt judicature.
From The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. II by Charles James Lever
That she had committed a technical offence is undeniable; but so did Andreas Hofer and other victims of Napoleonic tyranny whose doom patriotic Germans never cease to execrate.
From A Noble Woman The Life-Story of Edith Cavell by Ernest Protheroe
Ireland had reason to bless the movement towards liberty which came from France, and not less to execrate the excesses which strengthened the hands of liberty's opponents.
From Thomas Moore by Stephen Lucius Gwynn
They cannot bestow their hostility on one who loathes and execrates them more than I do, or who will oppose their views with more zeal, when the opportunity offers.
From Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 5 With His Letters and Journals by Thomas Moore
Everybody goes home in a sentimental glow and the native born working-man reads his Sydney Bulletin over a long-sleever and execrates the name of the country which bore his father and mother.
From Recollections With Photogravure Portrait of the Author and a number of Original Letters, of which one by George Meredith and another by Robert Louis Stevenson are reproduced in facsimile by David Christie Murray
She execrates indeed The tyranny that doomed them to the fire, But gives the glorious sufferers little praise.
From The Task and Other Poems by William Cowper
Including the upper superior mines, which it execrates.
From Les Misérables by Isabel Florence Hapgood
Beatrice Patrick Campbell is especially an artist, and her talent is that of charm and thought: she execrates beaten paths; she wants to create, and she creates.
From My Double Life The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt by Sarah Bernhardt
This man they’d execrated and denounced had shocked the world—not just by being his shocking self but by winning; nobody expected him to win!—and yet from them this evoked no reaction.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 7, 2016
The outcome of Sickles' trial for the murder of Key was that the public applauded him for the shooting, then execrated him when he "forgave" his wife by living with her in the same house.
From Time Magazine Archive
Toleration Sir: I got as great a lift out of the oblique slap your writer gave Pegler, who is execrated by most fair and decent people for his character assassinations ...
From Time Magazine Archive
Other Catholic periodicals of less importance gently rebuked or soundly execrated her.
From Time Magazine Archive
I have mine, too, on the same score—a bountiful will and confined means are a curse, and often have I execrated my fortunes so ill corresponding with my wishes.
From The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Volume II (of 2) by Florence A. Thomas Marshall
This iniquitous and impolitic proceeding had such an effect upon the minds of the people that all of any property or repute forsook the place, execrating the government of the Portuguese.
From The History of Sumatra Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And Manners Of The Native Inhabitants by William Marsden
I paced from post to post, execrating the sluggish march of time.
From Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. 22, March, 1852, Volume 4. by
This is so strictly true, that, when the moment for execution arrived, we heard the inhabitants who had fled to the churches execrating this destruction.
From The Two Great Retreats of History by D. H. (David Henry) Montgomery
Furiously he dashed into the thick of the conflict, and Triboulet, paralyzed with fear and dropping his lance, was borne helplessly onward, execrating the nag and his capricious humor.
From Under the Rose by Frederic Stewart Isham
The Honveds began execrating the name of a colonel who had often come to our soirées.
From Eyes Like the Sea by Mór Jókai
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
