Word.ws English Dictionary

accelerant

Syllables: ac·cel·er·ant/əkˈsɛləɹ(ə)nt/US/əkˈsɛləɹənt/

accelerant noun: in the context of fire protection, a substance that accelerates the development of a fire, especially some hydrocarbon-based fuel used to spread a fire caused by arson.

Noun

accelerant (plural accelerants)

  1. In the context of fire protection, a substance that accelerates the development of a fire, especially some hydrocarbon-based fuel used to spread a fire caused by arson.
    • Accelerant was poured across the beds where the two daughters of a family in Cheshire, Conn., had been tied before a fire during a home invasion in 2007, a fire investigator told jurors on Friday.2010 September 25, William Glaberson, “Accelerant Was on Girls’ Beds, Witness Tells a Connecticut Jury”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  2. A substance used to catalyze the vulcanization of rubber.
  3. (figuratively) Something that speeds up a process or the uptake of something else.
    • Hello Neighbor’s experience reflects the rise of video sites like YouTube as an accelerant for the video game business.2017 August 16, Laura Hudson, “Using YouTube as an Accelerant for Video Games”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
    • [Mike] Skinner can be credited with pouring lots of accelerant on pop in his time. In his absence, Caribbean-derived UK bass music became the de facto sound of British youth.2019 January 26, Kitty Empire [pseudonym], “The Streets review – the agony and ecstasy of a great everyman”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC...

Adjective

accelerant (comparative more accelerant, superlative most accelerant)

  1. Causing acceleration or speeding up; accelerating.

accelerant meaning in Tamil

accelerant in Tamil

முடுக்கி

Forms of accelerant

Noun
pluralaccelerants
Adjective
comparativemore accelerant
superlativemost accelerant

Origin of accelerant

From accelerate + -ant (suffix forming agent nouns from verbs, or forming adjectives with senses of being prone or tending to do the actions of verbs).

Questions about accelerant

What does accelerant mean?
Accelerant means in the context of fire protection, a substance that accelerates the development of a fire, especially some hydrocarbon-based fuel used to spread a fire caused by arson.
What is accelerant in Tamil?
Accelerant in Tamil is முடுக்கி. See Accelerant meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is accelerant?
Accelerant can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce accelerant?
Accelerant is pronounced /əkˈsɛləɹ(ə)nt/ (UK).
What is the plural of accelerant?
The plural of accelerant is accelerants.

Words near accelerant in the dictionary

  1. accelerable
  2. accelerando
  3. accelerandoes
  4. accelerandos
  5. accelerans
  6. accelerant
  7. accelerants
  8. acceleratable
  9. accelerate
  10. accelerated
  11. accelerated ageing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: accelerant (page history and authors); accelerant (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-accelerant.wav.

Cite this entry: “accelerant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/accelerant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.