electrify

UK/ɪˈlɛktɹɪfaɪ/US/ɪˈlɛktɹɪfaɪ/

verbB22 meaningsVery rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — electric sits at #1,701neutral

Other forms: electrified, electrifying, electrifies

To electrify something is to run electric current through it — or to thrill a crowd so completely that nobody moves. Both meanings are alive.

The literal one belongs to engineering: they electrified the railway line, meaning they converted it from diesel to electric power. An electrified fence carries a current, which is the version farmers and prison films use. The figurative sense is where the word gets exciting — a performance that electrified the audience, news that electrified the room. The adjective electrifying almost always means thrilling, and you will meet it far more often than the verb itself.

Definitions of electrify

1verbsupplyTo supply something with electric power, or convert it to run on electricity.B2
“The line was electrified in the 1960s.”
2verbelectrifyTo excite or thrill people intensely.B2
“Her final song electrified the whole hall.”
synonyms: thrill, galvanise

Where it comes from

New Latin
ēlectricus
English
electric
English, today
electrify

From electric + -fy. electric Borrowed from New Latin ēlectricus. c in a publication by Thomas Browne. From New Latin ēlectricus (“electrical; of amber”), from ēlectr(um) + icus; from Ancient Greek ἤλεκτρον (“amber”); related to ἠλέκτωρ (“shining sun”), of unknown origin (see which for more). The Latin term was apparently used first with the sense electrical in 1600 by the English physician and scientist William Gilbert in his work De Magnete.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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