EXPIATE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does expiate mean? 

• EXPIATE (verb)
  The verb EXPIATE has 1 sense:

1. make amends for

  Familiarity information: EXPIATE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EXPIATE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they expiate    ... he / she / it expiates   
Past simple: expiated   
Past participle: expiated   
-ing form: expiating   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Make amends for

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

aby; abye; atone; expiate

Context example:

expiate one's sins

Hypernyms (to "expiate" is one way to...):

compensate; correct; redress; right (make reparations or amends for)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

expiation (the act of atoning for sin or wrongdoing (especially appeasing a deity))

expiation (compensation for a wrong)

expiative; expiatory (having power to atone for or offered by way of expiation or propitiation)

 Context examples 

It will expiate at God's tribunal.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Again, I reflected that many of those who knew my brother had passed away, that all the facts need not come out, and that my death whilst under the suspicion of such a crime would cast a deeper stain upon our name than the sin which he had so terribly expiated.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

My horror of having committed a thousand offences I had forgotten, and which nothing could ever expiate—my recollection of that indelible look which Agnes had given me—the torturing impossibility of communicating with her, not knowing, Beast that I was, how she came to be in London, or where she stayed—my disgust of the very sight of the room where the revel had been held—my racking head—the smell of smoke, the sight of glasses, the impossibility of going out, or even getting up!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I keep it and rear it rather on the Roman Catholic principle of expiating numerous sins, great or small, by one good work.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)