What does examinate mean?
"Examinate" is a rare, now largely obsolete English noun denoting a person who is examined or questioned, most commonly within a legal or formal investigative setting. It appeared frequently in the records of early modern courts and commissions, where an examinate was the individual whose testimony was taken under oath, and in some contexts it could refer to the written record of that examination itself. The word derives from the Latin "examinare," meaning to weigh, test, or scrutinize, the same root that gives us "examine," "examination," and "examiner." Today, "examinate" survives mainly in historical scholarship and archival transcription, where precision about period vocabulary matters. In modern English, "examinee" has fully displaced it as the ordinary term for someone undergoing an exam or interrogation. For general readers, encountering "examinate" is usually a signal that they are reading primary-source material from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, or a modern work quoting it.
A person who is examined or questioned, especially under oath before a court, commission, or other formal body.
"The examinate denied all knowledge of the events described in the deposition."
Chiefly found in historical legal records; superseded in modern English by "examinee."
The written record or transcript of such an examination (archaic).
"The clerk entered the examinate into the register of the consistory court."
This sense is attested in older legal usage and is now effectively obsolete.
Regular plural; used almost exclusively in transcriptions of historical legal records.
"The commissioners questioned several examinates over the course of the inquiry."
Long before "examinee" existed, English law had its own word for the person on the hot seat: the examinate.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of examinate
Derived from Latin "examinare" (to weigh, test, examine), itself from "examen" (the tongue of a balance, hence a means of weighing), via Late Latin and Anglo-French influence on Middle English. "Examinate" emerged in legal English around the early modern period, sharing its root with "examine," "examination," and related forms. It gradually fell out of use as "examinee" became established.
How examinate is actually used
Archaic and now essentially obsolete outside of historical or legal-historical writing. Readers will almost always encounter it in early modern documents, court records, or scholarly works on legal history rather than in contemporary prose.
Easily confused with examinate
"Examinate" is a rare, chiefly historical legal term for a person under examination, while "examinee" is the standard modern word for someone taking an exam or being questioned.