exuviate

Etymology

From Latin exuviae (“what is shed”), from exuō (“cast off, strip”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɪɡˈzjuː.vɪ.eɪt/, /ɛkˈsuː.vɪ.eɪt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ɛkˈsuː.vɪ.eɪt/, /ɛɡˈzuː.vɪ.eɪt/

• Audio (US):

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  Audio (US):

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Verb

exuviate (third-person singular simple present exuviates, present participle exuviating, simple past and past participle exuviated)

1. (transitive, intransitive, rare) To shed or cast off a covering, especially a skin; to slough; to molt (moult).
   • 1996, Rolf Ludvigsen, chapter 4, in Life in Stone: A Natural History of British Columbia's Fossils, →ISBN, page 55:

     Like any arthropod encased in a rigid exoskeleton, a trilobite must periodically moult, or exuviate, in order to grow.

   • 2002, Bhikhu C. Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory, →ISBN, page 344:

     Although multicultural societies are difficult to manage, they need not become a political nightmare and might even become exciting if we exuviate our long traditional preoccupation with a culturally homogeneous and tightly structured polity and allow them instead to intimate their own appropriate institutional forms, modes of governance, and moral and political virtues.