Word.ws English Dictionary

combobulate

combobulate verb: to compose (oneself); to compose, organize, design, or arrange; to reverse the effect of discombobulation.

Verb

combobulate (third-person singular simple present combobulates, present participle combobulating, simple past and past participle combobulated)

  1. (humorous) To compose (oneself); to compose, organize, design, or arrange; to reverse the effect of discombobulation.
    • After losing his train of thought, the teacher took a deep breath and attempted to combobulate himself.
    • "I guess it would be better to try to make a Chanute glider—just a pair of sup'rimposed planes, instead of one all combobulated like a bat's wings, like Lilienthal's glider was..."1915, Sinclair Lewis, The Trail of the Hawk
    Synonyms:
    recombobulate

Examples of combobulate in a sentence

  • ...I thought we might do better if she had a moment to combobulate herself on her own terms.1991, Madison Smartt Bell, Doctor Sleep, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, page 95:
  • If he could not measure and scale and combobulate, a computer could do it.2008, David Adams Richards, The Lost Highway: a Novel, Anchor Canada, page 125:
  • Alexa climbed grudgingly into the back and their father said to just hold on now while we get ourselves combobulated and handed Alyssa a brimming cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee.2012, Brian McGreevy, Hemlock Grove: a Novel, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, page 94:
  • To keep things not unnecessarily combobulated and focused and the game face on for those that needed me still...2013, G. Meridian Paris, Southern Women, Author House, page 307:

Synonyms of combobulate

Forms of combobulate

third-person singular presentcombobulates
present participlecombobulating
past participlecombobulated
pastcombobulated

Origin of combobulate

Back-formation from discombobulate.

Questions about combobulate

What does combobulate mean?
Combobulate means to compose (oneself); to compose, organize, design, or arrange; to reverse the effect of discombobulation.
How do you use combobulate in a sentence?
...I thought we might do better if she had a moment to combobulate herself on her own terms.
What part of speech is combobulate?
Combobulate is a verb.
What is the past tense of combobulate?
The past tense of combobulate is combobulated.

Words near combobulate in the dictionary

  1. combo skin
  2. comboability
  3. comboable
  4. combobox
  5. comboboxes
  6. combobulate
  7. combobulated
  8. combobulates
  9. combobulating
  10. comboed
  11. comboes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: combobulate (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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