Other forms: rotating, rotated, rotates
To rotate is to turn around a central point. Rotate the handle, the earth rotates, rotate it clockwise.
In farming, to rotate crops is to change what grows in a field each year, which keeps the soil working and breaks pest cycles. In work, to rotate staff is to move them between jobs in turn. Note rotation, rotary, rotor; and that rotate is distinguished from revolve in careful use — a thing rotates about its own axis and revolves around something else, though almost nobody keeps that apart.
1verbrotateTo turn around a central point.
“The wheels rotate faster as the car speeds up.”
2verbchangeTo change things or people in turn.
“They rotate the crops on roughly a four-year cycle.”
rotate is a turning.
Latin rotare comes from rota, a wheel — the same root as rotary, round and rotunda. Rotating is behaving like a wheel, and the word says nothing more than that.
Proto-Indo-European
*Hreth₂-
Latin
rotātus
English, today
rotate
Built from
Latin rotātus, perfect passive participle of rotō (“revolve”) (see -ate and -ate), from rota (“wheel”) + -ō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA