The Collaborative International Dictionary
Expiate \Ex"pi*ate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Expiated; p. pr. & vb. n. Expiating.] [L. expiatus, p. p. of expiare to expiate; ex out + piare to seek to appease, to purify with sacred rites, fr. pius pious. See Pious.]
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To extinguish the guilt of by sufferance of penalty or some equivalent; to make complete satisfaction for; to atone for; to make amends for; to make expiation for; as, to expiate a crime, a guilt, or sin.
To expiate his treason, hath naught left.
--Milton.The Treasurer obliged himself to expiate the injury.
--Clarendon. -
To purify with sacred rites. [Obs.]
Neither let there be found among you any one that shall expiate his son or daughter, making them to pass through the fire.
--Deut. xviii. 10 (Douay version)
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of expiate English)
Usage examples of "expiating".
And therefore, although he distinguishes angels from demons, asserting that the habitation of the latter is in the air, while the former dwell in the ether and empyrean, and although he advises us to cultivate the friendship of some demon, who may be able after our death to assist us, and elevate us at least a little above the earth,-for he owns that it is by another way we must reach the heavenly society of the angels,-he at the same time distinctly warns us to avoid the society of demons, saying that the soul, expiating its sin after death, execrates the worship of demons by whom it was entangled.
I am expiating the sins of Madame de Pompadour, Madame Dubarry, the Parc-aux-Cerfs.
Or, again, if a man has been guilty of this sin of calling his brother Fool, unjustly reviling him without any desire to remove his sin, his alms-deeds go a small way towards expiating this fault, unless he adds to this the remedy of reconciliation which the same passage enjoins.
I am not thinking of it and I am not thinking of expiating it, and why are you all rubbing it in on all sides?
I keep it and rear it rather on the Roman Catholic principle of expiating numerous sins, great or small, by one good work.
His muteness was respected, for it was not a rare thing for a pilgrim, or a sinner who was expiating a penance, to take a vow of silence.
It was a very convenient suicide, I observed silently, wondering if Maximian had been given assistance in expiating his crime.