v. [f. L. expiscāt-, ppl. stem of expiscārī, f. ex- out + piscārī to fish, f. piscis fish.] trans. To ‘fish out’; hence, to find out by scrutiny. Occas. with sentence as object.
Chiefly in Sc. writers; elsewhere usually humorously, with distinct reference to the etymology.
1611. Chapman, Iliad, X. 181/135. O friends remaines not one, That will … mixe … With their outguards, expiscating, if the renown’d extreme, They force on vs, will serue their turnes…?
1721. Wodrow, Hist. Suff. Ch. Scot., III. vii. § 3. This Method was fallen upon to expiscate Matter of Criminal Process.
1830. Galt, Lawrie T., III. xii. I just propounded the project that I might expiscate some kind of satisfaction to my curiosity.
1831. Wilson, in Blackw. Mag., No. 180. To Corresp., Should we observe any farther impertinence on his part, we shall expiscate it.
1848. H. Miller, First Impr., xvii. (1857), 285. The evidence already expiscated on this point.
1864. D’Arcy W. Thompson, Day Dreams, iv. (ed. 2), 38. Have they ever expiscated one intelligible reason?
nonce-use. To exhaust of fish.
1858. Sat. Rev., V. 29 May, 568–9. Fish nowadays require the finest and most delicate tackle, and are not to be taken in England as they are in Siberia, which, now that Norway is nearly expiscated, is about the only place in the world where fish are so unsophisticated and guiltless of the ways of man as to be caught as in the days of Walton and Cotton.
