Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

truncate

UK/tɹʌŋˈkeɪt/US/ˈtɹʌŋˌke̯ɪ̯t/
verbC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechToo rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: truncated, truncating, truncates

To truncate is to cut something short by lopping off the end. Truncate the text.

In computing it means silently discarding whatever will not fit, which causes real bugs. To truncate a cone or a pyramid is to slice the top off flat.

Definitions of truncate

  1. 1verbtruncateTo cut something short by lopping off the end.C1

    “The field truncated the address at forty characters.”

truncate is an action.

Where it comes from

Latin truncare, to lop, from truncus, a trunk or a maimed body.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *twerḱ-

  2. Latin

    truncātus

  3. English, today

    truncate

Built from

  • truncō · Latin — maim, reduce to a trunk

From Latin truncātus, perfect passive participle of truncō (“maim, reduce to a trunk”); see trunk as a verb.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

truncate in the wild

  • For example, tC represents a truncated cube, and taC, parsed as t(aC), is (topologically) a truncated cuboctahedron.

    Conway polyhedron notation

  • Cheritrella truncipennis, the truncate imperial, is a small butterfly found in India (Sikkim - Assam), Burma and West China (Yunnan) that belongs to the lycaenids or blues family.

    Cheritrella

  • The Philippine narrowmouth toad or the truncate-toed chorus frog (Kaloula conjuncta) is a species of frog in the family Microhylidae.

    Philippine narrowmouth toad

  • The apex of the marginal cell of the wing is truncate, and the trochanteral scopa is reduced.

    Panurginae

  • Mya truncata, common name the blunt gaper or truncate softshell, is a species of edible saltwater clam, a marine bivalve mollusk in the family Myidae.

    Mya truncata

1 / 2

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.