In Jamaica last week, an otherwise disappointing Scrabble game against Simon Clark did yield one fine bingo on my part, which he did not challenge, but later said was not a real word. EMOLIATE may not be in the Official Scrabble Player’s dictionary, but I did a search for emoliate on google and it is clearly a word, as evinced by these web excerpts:

By “facile translations” I just mean that a successful syntax, accompanied by its repertory shows of suitable transformations, ought to be able to emulate and to emoliate the support skids of the near-automatic performances of properly-trained humans in shifting back and forth between geometric pictures of sets in extensional gear and functional pictures of predicates and properties in intensional gear, in semiotic trajectories that can be recognized as not being incognizant of external worlds, whether on the globe of earth or in ethereal platonic spheres.

And:

Old ideas of love and romance and passion have become silly, and, by modern biological standards, sick and demeaning. But we are left with an aching need for love, romance, passion, and self-emoliation.

And:

According to the Nei Jing (Inner Classic), the liver’s function of coursing and discharge is dependent upon the liver’s obtaining sufficient blood to nourish and emoliate it.

Finally, this beautiful and moving poem leaves no doubt as to what the word means.

[Tue, May 07 2002 – 09:25] Matthew (email) of course, you cleverly forgot to mention that simon trounced you stunningly in said game, if i remember rightly, almost doubling your score. and that was, what, his second ever game?

[Tue, May 07 2002 – 09:26] Matthew (email) …and EMOLIATE isn’t in any normal dictionary. don’t think google counts, even as a salve to your wonded pride.