apricate

present singular third person apricates · participle present apricating · participle past apricated · past apricated

1. intransitiverareTo bask in the sun.

   Cats like to apricate.

   5 more examples

   From the top of this gatehouse was a most pleasant and delightful prospect as is to be seen. His Lordship [Sir Thomas More] was wont to recreate himself in this place to apricate and contemplate, and his little dog with him.

   1697, [John Aubrey], “Sir Thomas More”, in [Charles Henry Wilson], editor, The Polyanthea: Or, A Collection of Interesting Fragments, in Prose and Verse: […] In Two Volumes, volume I, London: Printed for J. Budd, […], published 1804, →OCLC, page 149

   […] I rubbed my eyes, doubting the very evidence of my own eyesight—a or the huge man in his shirt-sleeves; yes, positively not sunning but mooning himself—apricating himself in the occasional moonbeams; and, as if simple star-gazing from a sedentary station were not sufficient on such a night, absolutely pursuing his astrological studies, I repeat, in his shirt-sleeves!

   1839 July, “the English Opium-eater” [pseudonym; Thomas De Quincey], “Lake Reminiscences, from 1807 to 1830. No. IV.—William Wordsworth and Robert Southey.”, in William Tait, editor, Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume VI, number LXVII, Edinburgh: William Tait; London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.; Dublin: John Cumming, →OCLC, page 461, column 2

   Eating apricots and apricating himself the while on a garden wall, his hands in his pockets, he [the poet James Thomson] forms a pretty pendant to the Horatian picture.

   1855 June, “Sir Nathaniel” [pseudonym; Francis Jacox], “Literary Leaflets. No. XXII.—James Thomson.”, in William Harrison Ainsworth, editor, The New Monthly Magazine, volume CIV, number CCCCXIV, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, page 165

   The infirm state of my bodily health would be a sufficient apology for not taking up the pen at this time, wholesome as I deem it for the mind to apricate in the shelter of epistolary confidence, were it not that a considerable, I might even say a large, number of individuals in this parish expect from their pastor some publick exprssion of sentiment at this crisis.

   1862, Homer Wilbur [pseudonym; James Russell Lowell], “[The Biglow Papers. (Second Series.)] Latest Views of Mr. Biglow.”, in Melibœus-Hipponax. The Biglow Papers, […], London: S. O. Beeton, […], published [1865], →OCLC, page 170

   It would never have occurred to him that in placing the apricot in my palm he was giving me his ass to hold or that, in biting the fruit, I was also biting into that part of his body that must have been fairer than the rest because it never apricated— […]

   2007, André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN; republished New York, N.Y.: Picador, 2008, →ISBN, page 35

   Synonyms: sun, bask, sunbathe

2. alsofigurativelyraretransitiveTo disinfect and freshen by exposing to the sun; to sun.

   1 more example

   No longer were social parties the old heraldic solemnities enjoyed by red letters in the almanac, in which the chief objects were to discharge some arrear of ceremonious debt, or to ventilate old velvets, or to apricate and refresh old gouty systems and old traditions of feudal ostentation, which both alike suffered and grew smoke-dried under too rigorous a seclusion.

   1851 May, Thomas De Quincey, “Lord Carlisle on Pope. From Tait’s Magazine.”, in W. H. Bidwell, editor, The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, volume XXIII, number I, New York, N.Y.: Published at 120 Nassau Street, →OCLC, page 74, column 2