Word.ws English Dictionary

co-operate

co-operate is the alternative spelling of cooperate.

Meaning of cooperate

Verb

cooperate (third-person singular simple present cooperates, present participle cooperating, simple past and past participle cooperated)

  1. (intransitive) To work or act together, especially for a common purpose or benefit.
    • In polling by the Pew Research Center in November 2008, fully half the respondents thought the two parties would cooperate more in the coming year, versus only 36 percent who thought the climate would grow more adversarial.2012 November 7, Matt Bai, “Winning a Second Term, Obama Will Confront Familiar Headwinds”, in New York Times
  2. (intransitive) To allow for mutual unobstructed action.
  3. (intransitive) To function in harmony, side by side.
  4. (intransitive) To engage in economic cooperation.
  5. (jargon, transitive) To obtain the cooperation of (a potential witness); to turn (someone) into a cooperating witness.

Forms of co-operate

third-person singular presentco-operates
present participleco-operating
past participleco-operated
pastco-operated

Questions about co-operate

What is co-operate the alternative spelling of?
Co-operate is the alternative spelling of cooperate.

Words near co-operate in the dictionary

  1. co-occurs
  2. co-official
  3. co-op
  4. Co-op mix
  5. co-oped
  6. co-operate
  7. co-operated
  8. co-operates
  9. co-operating
  10. co-operation
  11. co-operative

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: co-operate (page history and authors); cooperate (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.

Last updated:

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