E
We close, for now, our promenade through the first five letters of the alphabet with the help of Buckley: The Right Word by the late, esteemed William F. Buckley. He was celebrated for his immense English vocabulary and this is our modest admiration of his articulations. The definition below is from "A Buckley Lexicon", which was appended to The Right Word, and the example sentence is by way of Buckley's 1987 novel, Mongoose, R.I.P: A Blackford Oakes Mystery. A contemporary example rounds out the week.
expiate (verb) To make up for; atone for.
"During those ninety days he came to terms with himself. He decided that he could not expiate the sin he had committed against an innocent man until he had undertaken a great and heroic task of redemption."
Did you know that San Franciscans flocked to their city's Dolores Park on Easter Sunday for the "Hunky Jesus" competition run by a gay group? "But the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence insist the contest is all part of their mission to 'promote universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt'", wrote Dan Emerson in the Sydney Morning Herald. The sheer absurdity of it would have brought a wry smile to Bill Buckley's lips.
