dissipate
English
Etymology
From Middle English dissipate, from Latin dissipatus, past participle of dissipare, also written dissupare (“to scatter, disperse, demolish, destroy, squander, dissipate”), from dis- (“apart”) + supare (“to throw”), also in comp. insipare (“to throw into”).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈdɪsɪpeɪt/
Audio (CA) (file)
Verb
dissipate (third-person singular simple present dissipates, present participle dissipating, simple past and past participle dissipated)
- (transitive) To drive away, disperse.
- August 1773, James Cook, journal entry
- I soon dissipated his fears.
- 1817, William Hazlitt, The Round Table
- The extreme tendency of civilization is to dissipate all intellectual energy.
- August 1773, James Cook, journal entry
- (transitive) To use up or waste; squander.
- 1679–1715, Gilbert Burnet, “(please specify the page)”, in The History of the Reformation of the Church of England., London: […] T[homas] H[odgkin] for Richard Chiswell, […]:
- The vast wealth […] was in three years dissipated.
- 1931, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Babylon Revisited
- So much for the effort and ingenuity of Montmartre. All the catering to vice and waste was on an utterly childish scale, and he suddenly realized the meaning of the word "dissipate"—to dissipate into thin air; to make nothing out of something.
- 1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy:
- If he prefers the bar he can exchange views with a Major de Wildman of Lord knew whose army, who calls himself King Farouk's equerry and claims to have a private telephone link to Cairo so that he can report the winning numbers and take royal orders inspired by soothsayers on how to dissipate the wealth of Egypt.
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- (intransitive) To vanish by dispersion.
- (physics) To cause energy to be lost through its conversion to heat.
- 1960 April, “English Electric diesels for the Sudan Railways”, in Trains Illustrated, page 218:
- The traction motors serve as generators when dynamic braking is used, the generated output being dissipated in fan-cooled resistance banks mounted in a removable roof section.
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- (intransitive, colloquial, dated) To be dissolute in conduct.
Related terms
- dissipation
Translations
to dissipate — see disperse
to drive away
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to use up or waste
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to vanish
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Further reading
- dissipate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
- dissipate in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911
- “dissipate”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
Italian
Verb
dissipate
- inflection of dissipare:
- second-person plural present indicative
- second-person plural imperative
Participle
dissipate f pl
- feminine plural of dissipato
Latin
Verb
dissipāte
- second-person plural present active imperative of dissipō