Other forms: vibrating, vibrates, vibrated
To vibrate is to shake with rapid small movements. Too fast to see the individual movements, and you feel it rather than watch it.
Phones vibrate, engines vibrate and a plucked string vibrates, which is what makes the sound. Physics uses the word precisely, since all sound is vibration passing through a material. The noun is vibration, and the plural vibrations was shortened in the 1960s to vibes, meaning the atmosphere of a place or a person. A vibrating phone in a quiet room is louder than a ringing one.
1verbvibrateTo move rapidly back and forth with small movements.
“The whole floor vibrated when the train went past.”
Vibrate is a shaking. Latin vibrō meant to agitate or to set in tremulous motion, from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to oscillate or to swing.
Proto-Indo-European
*weyp- — to oscillate, swing
Latin
vibrātus
Middle English
vibrat — reverberant
English, today
vibrate
Built from
The adjective (then also used as a participle) is 1420, in Middle English, the verb in 1620; partly from Middle English vibrat (“reverberant”), partly directly Latin vibrātus, perfect passive participle of vibrō (“to agitate, set in tremulous motion”) (see -ate), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European weyp- (“to oscillate, swing”) or weyb-.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA