extimate

English

WOTD – 9 December 2021

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɛkstɪmət/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
Hyphenation: ex‧tim‧ate

Etymology 1

PIE word
*h₁eǵʰs

From Latin extimus (“furthest; outermost”) +‎ -ate (adjective-forming suffix), modelled after ultimate.^[1] Extimus is the superlative form of exter (“on the outside, external, outer, outward”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eǵʰs (“out”). Compare intimate.

Adjective

extimate (not comparable)

(obsolete, rare) Most distant or faraway; outermost, uttermost.
Synonyms: farthest, furthest; see also Thesaurus:distant

Antonyms: closest, nearest; see also Thesaurus:near
- 1659, Henry More, “1. That the Better Sort of Genii Converse in Humane Shape, the Baser Sometimes in Bestial. […]”, in The Immortality of the Soul; […], London: […] J[ames] Flesher, for William Morden […], →OCLC, book III, paragraph 5, page 412:
  [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.
- 1672, [Henry More], “His Answer to the First Paragraph”, in A Brief Reply to a Late Answer to Dr. Henry More His Antidote against Idolatry. […], London: […] J. Redmayne, for Walter Kettilby […], →OCLC, page 120:
  Nor then will this high flight beyond the ſupreme or extimate Heaven ſerve for any evaſion. For as much as we ſpeak of Bodies placed on this ſide of the extimate Heaven, and no Body can be found amongſt Bodies, but it will be circumſcribed by the ambient ſuperficies of the next Bodies about it, that ſuperficies of the ambient Bodies that do immediately compaſs the environ'd Body being its place.
- 1683, [Henry More], “Annotations upon the Discourse of Truth. […]”, in [Joseph Glanvill], [George] Rust, Two Choice and Vseful Treatises: The One Lux Orientalis; or An Enquiry into the Opinion of the Eastern Sages Concerning the Præexistence of Souls. […] The Other, A Discourse of Truth, […], London: […] James Collins and Sam[uel] Lowndes […], →OCLC, page 239:
  But to give Mr. [Richard] Baxter his due, though the extream or extimate parts of this Paragraph, pag. 82, which you may fancie as the skin thereof, may ſeem to have ſomething of bitterneſs and toughneſs in it, yet the Belly of the Paragraph is full of plums and ſweet things.
- 1704, Plutarch, “[Plutarch’s Giving an Account of Those Sentiments Concerning Nature with which Philosophers were Delighted; […]] Of Colours.”, in John Dowel, transl., Plutarch’s Morals: […], 4th edition, volume III, London: […] Tho[mas] Braddyll, […], →OCLC, page 140:
  Colour is the viſible quality of a Body, the Pythagoreans called Colour the extimate appearance of a Body; […]
- 1895 May, G[eorge] W[arrington] Steevens, “Four Cameos: I. Nero”, in W[illiam] E[rnest] Henley, editor, The New Review, volume XII, number 72, London: William Heinemann, […], →OCLC, page 537:
  The artist temperament—ah, the artist temperament, that asks nothing but the unlimited faculty of moulding the world into opportune impressions; that shrinks back from all things extimate beyond the repletion of each sense; that demands no commune with me, but as stuff for its beautiful exercises!

Translations

most distant or faraway — see outermost,‎ uttermost

Etymology 2

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),^[2]^[3] probably from a blend of French externe (“external”) + intimité (“closeness, intimacy”). The English word can be analysed as a blend of external +‎ intimate.

Adjective

extimate

(psychology) In the works of Jacques Lacan: simultaneously external and intimate.
- 1995, Jonathan Elmer, “Introduction: The Figure of Mass Culture”, in Reading at the Social Limit: Affect, Mass Culture, & Edgar Allan Poe, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page 26:
  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.
- 1999, Fred Botting, “Romance of the Machine”, in Sex, Machines and Navels: Fiction, Fantasy and History in the Future Present, Manchester, New York, N.Y.: Manchester University Press, →ISBN, page 210:
  The romantic ‘fatal desire for mystical union’ emerges as a (non)relation to ‘some other’, to the ‘other’s alien life’ […]. In Lacanian terms this other functions like the extimate Thing, locus of the minimal difference in and more than the subject.
- 2000, Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, “The Object of Whiteness”, in Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race, London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 68:
  The notion of the extimate object as the cause of desire is used to denote that the most intimate and hidden aspect of the subject is also that which is most foreign and other to ourselves.
- 2021, Holger Schulze, “The Intimate”, in Holger Schulze, editor, The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Anthropology of Sound, New York, N.Y., London: Bloomsbury Academic, →ISBN, part II (Sounding Flesh), page 160:
  Actually, it is just this quality of being in public, in the outside world, that makes an extimate experience and an extimate desire substantially meaningul to you or me: "it is intimate to us while being exterior at the same time" […] Would it be imaginable that such extimate reflections and evaluations, doubts and sensible explorations would be an intrinsic part of public life?

Related terms

extimacy

Translations

simultaneously external and intimate

French: extimité (fr) f

References

^ “† extimate, adj.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2019.
^ Jacques Lacan (1986) Jacques-Alain Miller, editor, Le séminaire de Jacques Lacan. Livre VII: L’éthique de la psychanalyse: 1959–1960 [Seminars of Jacques Lacan. Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: 1959–1960] (Le Champ freudien [The Freudian Field]), Paris: Éditions du Seuil, →ISBN.
^ David Pavón-Cuéllar (2013) “Extimacy”, in Thomas Teo, editor, Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, volume 2, New York, N.Y.: Springer, →DOI, →ISBN.

[1] “† extimate, adj.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2019.

[2] Jacques Lacan (1986) Jacques-Alain Miller, editor, Le séminaire de Jacques Lacan. Livre VII: L’éthique de la psychanalyse: 1959–1960 [Seminars of Jacques Lacan. Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: 1959–1960] (Le Champ freudien [The Freudian Field]), Paris: Éditions du Seuil, →ISBN.

[3] David Pavón-Cuéllar (2013) “Extimacy”, in Thomas Teo, editor, Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, volume 2, New York, N.Y.: Springer, →DOI, →ISBN.

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