English

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 0774805781, 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 0674009959, 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.

Synonyms

• (to shed or cast off a covering): molt, slough

Related terms

• exuviae
• exuvial
• exuviation
• exuvious

Translations