Extimate
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Most distant or faraway; outermost, uttermost. not-comparable, obsolete, rare
"[I]f we could ſee the Soule her ſelf, we could know no more by her then ſhe thus exhibits to our eye: which perſonal figuration in the extimate parts thereof, that repreſent the Body, Face and Veſtments, may be attempered to ſo fine an opacity, that it may reflect the light in more perfect colours then it is from any earthly body, and yet the whole Vehicle be ſo devoid of weight, as it will neceſſarily keep its ſtation in the Aire."
- 2 In the works of Jacques Lacan: simultaneously external and intimate.
"Since [Edgar Allan] Poe is viewed by the critical tradition as simultaneously inevitable and dubious, we should strive to see him as neither in nor out of the central canon, but rather, to adopt one of [Jacques] Lacan's neologisms, as extimate with relation to it, "simultaneously the intimate kernel and the foreign body," as Mladen Dolar glosses the term succinctly. The extimate is, like the social limit I have been outlining, a fold or fissure within a conceptual and discursive structure, an internal limit."
Example
More examples"[I]f we could ſee the Soule her ſelf, we could know no more by her then ſhe thus exhibits to our eye: which perſonal figuration in the extimate parts thereof, that repreſent the Body, Face and Veſtments, may be attempered to ſo fine an opacity, that it may reflect the light in more perfect colours then it is from any earthly body, and yet the whole Vehicle be ſo devoid of weight, as it will neceſſarily keep its ſtation in the Aire."
Etymology
From Latin extimus (“furthest; outermost”) + -ate (adjective-forming suffix), modelled after ultimate. Extimus is the superlative form of exter (“on the outside, external, outer, outward”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eǵʰs (“out”). Compare intimate.
From extimacy + -ate (adjective-forming suffix). Extimacy is a calque of French extimité (coined by the French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) in 1959–1960), probably from a blend of French externe (“external”) + intimité (“closeness, intimacy”). The English word can be analysed as a blend of external + intimate.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.