He was listening, with a good-humored, negligent air, half comic, half contemptuous, to Haley, who was very volubly expatiating on the quality of the article for which they were bargaining.
Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
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Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here. I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them.
Herman Melville. Moby Dick
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Emma expatiated much on the misery of earthly affections, and the eternal isolation in which the heart remains entombed.