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dissipate

UK/ˈdɪsɪpeɪt/US/ˈdɪsɪpeɪt/
verbC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,646 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: dissipated, dissipating, dissipates

To dissipate is to scatter and disappear, or to waste away. The fog dissipated, dissipate the tension, dissipate a fortune.

Of mist and tension it means simply to melt away, and of money it means to lose it a little at a time on nothing. The related dissipated, said of a person, means worn out by too much of everything.

Definitions of dissipate

  1. 1verbdissipateTo scatter and disappear, or to waste away.C1

    “The morning fog soon dissipated, and we could see the mountains again.”

dissipate is a scattering.

Where it comes from

Latin dissipare means to scatter, from dis- plus a root meaning to throw.

  1. Latin

    dissipātus

  2. Middle English

    dissipaten

  3. English, today

    dissipate

Built from

  • dissupō · Latin — to scatter, disperse, demolish, destroy, squander, dissipate
  • dis- · Latin — apart
  • supō · Latin — to throw

The verb is 1425, in Middle English, the adjective from 1606 to 1765; from Middle English dissipaten, from Latin dissipātus, perfect passive participle of dissipō (see -ate and -ate), also written dissupō (“to scatter, disperse, demolish, destroy, squander, dissipate”), from dis- (“apart”) + supō (“to throw”). a doublet of dissipe, now obsolete.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

dissipate in the wild

  • The entropy production rate times local temperature gives the dissipated power.

    Dissipation

  • A variable resistor would dissipate power as heat and acts as a voltage divider.

    Dimmer

  • Impairment from sleep inertia may take several hours to dissipate.

    Sleep inertia

  • The ampacity of a conductor depends on its ability to dissipate heat without damage to the conductor or its insulation.

    Ampacity

  • The creation of these stress fields is a result of the material trying to dissipate mechanical energy that is being exerted on the material.

    Stress field

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.