Other forms: expiated, expiating
To expiate is to make amends for a wrong you have done. Expiate his guilt, expiate the crime, expiate a sin.
The idea is that the wrong is wiped out by what you do afterwards, which is why it belongs to religion and to tragedy rather than to law. Atone is the everyday equivalent. Expiation is the noun, and it always implies real cost to the one making it.
1verbexpiateTo make amends for a wrong you have done.
“He spent years doing charity work to expiate the harm he had caused.”
expiate is a making amends.
Latin expiare means to atone for — ex, out, plus piare, to appease, from pius, dutiful.
Proto-Indo-European
*pewH-
Latin
expiātus
English, today
expiate
Built from
From Latin expiātus, past participle of expiō (“atone for”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA