A Dictionary of Cont..

exhilarate 168
exhilarate. See accelerate.
exist; subsist. To exist is to be, to have life or
animation, to continue to live (Life could not
exist without the sun. The idea that a heretic
might have any civil rights simply did not exist).
To subsist connotes to exist dependently. One
could not say The idea that a heretic might have
any civil rights simply did not subsist, but one
could say Superstition subsists upon ignorance,
meaning that it maintains or supports itself by
this means (Some animals subsist upon vegetables.
From that time on he subsisted on his
writings).
exit is the third person singular present of the
Latin verb exire, to go out. Its use in stage directions
has led to its being employed as a noun
meaning a going out or a place of going out.
It is sometimes used with ponderous facetiousness
as a verb (Exit Joe Doakes), even as a
plural (There was a moment’s silence, then exit
Sam and Edna). If one must speak Latin, it
should be exeunt in the plural. Best, except as
a stage direction, is not to use it at all.
exoteric. See esoteric.
exotic; outlandish; uncouth. Exotic means of foreign
origin, not native, introduced from abroad
but not-yet acclimatized. When Murphy in his
translation of Tacitus ( 1793) said that a certain
people invited an exotic king’to reign over them,
he simply meant a king from another country.
A clear instance of this, the primary meaning
of the word, is given in an article in The Nutional
Geographic Magazine (August 1954).
The author had been discussing the sudden appearance
of the cattle egret in places where it
had not been seen before. After experiences
with such introduced species as the house sparrow
and starling, he says, we naturally view
exotic birds with a jaundiced eye.
Certainly the sparrow is not generally thought
of as an exotic bird, for the word in its common
use does not mean “introduced from abroad”
but suggests the glamorous (see glamor) and
romantic (see romantic) things which the naive
associate with “imported.” The strange is colorful,
rich, attractive, rare and wonderful. It
is usually expensive and (perhaps therefore)
slightly wicked. And all of these meanings, mingled
in varying degrees, are in exotic in its popular
uses. The dictionaries still give “of foreign
origin” the primacy in definition but-at least
for American usage-they are behind the times.
The word is rarely heard now in that sense. The
sentence quoted above from The National Geographic
Magazine would probably be a little
puzzling to the common reader. An American
tailor who assured a customer that he had some
fine, new, exotic flannels and worsteds would,
if the customer were a man, probably lose a sale.
That which comes from a foreign land is also,
often, repellent in its strangeness, absurd and
ridiculous. And these meanings, which were
once in exotic (entering the city in that exotick
and barbarous garb) have now been transferred
to its homely Anglo-Saxon equivalent, outlandish.
Uncouth originally meant unknown. The old
proverb Uncouth unltissed, which might now
serve as an advertisement for a book of etiquette,
simply meant that those who were not
known would go unwooed. It was an earlier way
of saying that full many a flower is born to
blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the
desert air. But all idea of the unknown has now
faded from uncouth and only the ideas of
strange, rough, and alien remain.
expect may be followed by an infinitive, as in
England expects every man to do his duty, or by
a clause, as in I expect he will come. Expect is
sometimes used in speaking of a present or past
event, as in I expect you’re hungry and I expect
he was there. This was once literary English and
the word is still used in this way by educated
people in the United States. In Great Britain
this use is condemned as an Americanism.
expectorate; spit. The practice of euphemism can
be dangerous for the unwary and the uninformed.
Sometimes in seeking to be refined
and elegant they choose a worse word than the
one they seek to avoid. Spit, for example, is a
perfectly good word to describe a natural and
often necessary act; whereas expectorate, which
is sometimes preferred to it by those who think
they are being more delicate, is not only ponderous
but more unpleasant. For to spit is, properly,
to eject saliva from the mouth, but to
expectorate is to bring up and expel phlegm
from the lungs by coughing, hawking, or spitting.
Thus a directive of the Breen office, which is
concerned with Hollywood’s manners as well as
its morals but not, apparently, with its sense of
style, suggested that directors Eliminate, wherever
it occurs, the action of actually expectorating
Spit (Time, Oct. 25, 1954). Eliminate
spitting would probably have been more accurate
and certainly would have been more direct.
Anyone actually expectorating Spit would be
choking and strangling. Time, which has its own
standards of style, refers to the directive as
blunt.
expedient. See politic.
expensive. See costly.
experiment (noun). See trial.
expire; terminate. As a transitive verb expire
means to breathe out (He expired his last
breath just at the turning of the tide). As an
intransitive verb it means to come to an end
(The lease expired in lanuary) . For a transitive
verb meaning to bring to an end, terminate
serves for many of the uses of expire (The
landlord says that he will terminate the lease in
January).
explain; elucidate; expound; interpret. To explain
is used sometimes as if it meant merely to
show. It means to make clear or intelligible
(Explaining metaphysics to the nation./ I wish
he would explain his explanation-Byron on
Coleridge).
To elucidate is to throw light on, usually by
illustration or commentary, sometimes by elaborate
explanation (His notes elucidate the text.