Word of the day: Expiscate

Expiscate

[EX-pis-keyt]

Part of speech: verb

Origin: Latin, 16th century

1.To find out by skill or laborious investigation.

2.To search out.

Examples of expiscate in a sentence

"Through long periods of interrogation, the detective was eventually able to expiscate the whole story from the suspect."

"When I got in trouble at school, my mother always managed to expiscate the details from my brother."

About Expiscate

This comes from the Latin “expiscatus,” meaning “to fish out,” which itself is formed by combining “ex” (meaning “out”) and “piscari” (meaning “to fish”).

Did you Know?

The nature of the action of expiscating is to draw out a truth that someone is trying to keep hidden — or even does not understand to be the truth. As a result, most police interrogations and legal cross-examinations are driven by the desire to expiscate. Rather than simply revealing details already openly available, a police interrogator or cross-examining attorney works to expiscate the truth from a witness or suspect by asking direct and indirect questions that relate to the hidden truth, in the hope of catching them in a contradiction and forcing them to reveal the whole story.