excruciate
/ɪkˈskruːʃɪeɪt
/ /ɛkˈskruːʃɪeɪt/verb [with object] rare
Torment (someone) physically or mentally: I stand back, excruciated by the possibility...
- For him, cruelty was a legitimate and necessary procedure, almost a profession of faith, and European artists showed him how to excruciate a tame local reality.
- Nothing, except the lingering echo in his mind of the last thing he had heard; of that excruciated scream of someone on the ship, burning to death.
- If being in the plane was bad then the jump was excruciated.
Derivatives
excruciation
/ /ɛkskruːʃɪˈeɪʃ(ə)n / noun ...- The excruciation in my stomach was beyond any other pain I'd received in my life, yet the feeling of relief that it was me, not Joanna, who was experiencing this cancelled it out.
- As we are about to leave, Michel presents us with a small packet of madeleines, the Proustian cake symbolic of the sweet excruciations of the past.
- Though it was a numb, lack-of-all sensation that laid claim to his body, it was far more merciful than the excruciation of the previous weeks.
Origin
Late 16th century: from Latin excruciat- 'tormented', from the verb excruciare (based on crux, cruc- 'a cross').