Other forms: dedicated, dedicating, dedicates
To dedicate is to give your time and heart fully to one purpose or person. Dedicate her life to it, dedicated to the cause, dedicate the book to somebody.
The construction is dedicate something to something. Dedicating a book is naming the person it is for. Dedicating a building is formally opening it. Of equipment, dedicated means reserved for one purpose: a dedicated line, a dedicated server. Note dedication, which covers all of it; and that dedicated in a job reference is high praise meaning somebody who does considerably more than the job requires.
1verbdedicateTo give your time and heart fully to one purpose.
“She dedicated her life to helping homeless children.”
2verbnameTo name the person a work is for.
“He dedicated the book to somebody who never read it.”
dedicate is a giving over to a purpose.
Also accepted in games: devote
Latin dedicare is de- plus dicare, to proclaim — the same root as indicate and dictate. Dedicating something is declaring what it is for, whether that is a church, a book or a life.
Proto-Indo-European
*deyḱ-
Latin
dēdicātus
Middle English
dedicaten — to dedicate
English, today
dedicate
Built from
From Middle English dedicaten (“to dedicate”), from dedicat(e) + -en, from Latin dēdicātus, the perfect passive participle of dēdicō (“to dedicate, proclaim”), see -ate.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Verbs