"To be excoriated, by the way, literally means 'to have one's skin removed'; it's the heavy-duty version of exfoliated."Suddenly, pumice stones and gritty facial scrubs sound as soft and gentle as dust bunnies.
This literal meaning is borne out by the term's Latin roots: ex meaning "out of" or "from" plus corium for "skin" or "hide," according to the New Oxford American Dictionary. The OED's definitions for excoriate are, essentially, to strip or peel off, as in a skin or hide; to remove a surface or lining by corrosion or abrasion. In other words, to flay or disintegrate.
My childhood reading included its share of pirate stories -- always good fodder for adventure with a touch of villainy and gore. But it wasn't until I ran my hands over the serrated surface of a barnacle-encrusted piece of wood during a beach trip that I truly appreciated the horrors of keelhauling, the practice of dragging a sailor along the underside of the ship, combining the flaying of flesh with the terror of drowning.
As a metaphor for criticism, excoriation is therefore truly the most severe form. Such is the price of fame, I guess, since any writer or any public figure of a certain level of renown faces the potential of being excoriated by his or her critics.
Perhaps those of us who labor in obscurity have the consolation of facing no more than an occasional mild abrasion. However, the vast open ocean of the Web has brought out the pirates, judging by some of the anonymous comments I see posted on many a blog or online article, even some that are pretty obscure. And some of these comments make keelhauling seem like a mere buffing with a loofah by comparison.
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