Other forms: hibernating, hibernates, hibernated
To hibernate is to sleep through the whole winter. Bears hibernate, hibernate until spring, a hibernating hedgehog.
True hibernation drops the body temperature and the heart rate enormously, and a hedgehog's heart falls to a few beats a minute. Bears do something lighter and can be woken. Waking a hibernating animal costs it fat it cannot spare.
1verbhibernateTo sleep through the whole winter.
“Bears hibernate in caves and live off their body fat until spring.”
hibernate is a sleeping.
Latin hibernare means to spend the winter, from hibernus, wintry, from hiems, winter.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵʰey-
Latin
hībernātus
English, today
hibernate
Built from
Latin hībernātus, perfect passive participle of hībernō (see -ate), from hībernus (“wintry”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA