Word.ws English Dictionary

decurtate

decurtate adjective: shortened, curtailed.

Adjective

decurtate (comparative more decurtate, superlative most decurtate)

  1. (rare) Shortened, curtailed.
    • Bána […] lopped off his own hands and feet […] In this decurtate condition he dictated a poem of a hundred couplets.1859, F. Hall, Vásavadattá (Preface 8)

Verb

decurtate (third-person singular simple present decurtates, present participle decurtating, simple past and past participle decurtated)

  1. (archaic, rare, transitive) To cut short.
    • Other writers there are, that would haue him signifie Tyme, as that with his sythe he should measure and proportionise the length of Time, and therewith to decurtate and cut away all things contained therein.1973, Sōji Iwasaki, The Sword and the Word: Shakespeare's Tragic Sense of Time, page 15

Forms of decurtate

Adjective
comparativemore decurtate
superlativemost decurtate
Verb
third-person singular presentdecurtates
present participledecurtating
past participledecurtated
pastdecurtated

Origin of decurtate

First attested around the beginning of the 16th century; borrowed from Latin dēcurtātus, perfect passive participle of dēcurtō, see -ate (adjective-forming suffix) and -ate (verb-forming suffix). Doublet of decurt.

Questions about decurtate

What does decurtate mean?
Decurtate means shortened, curtailed.
What part of speech is decurtate?
Decurtate can be an adjective or a verb.

Words near decurtate in the dictionary

  1. decurrently
  2. decursinol
  3. decursion
  4. decursions
  5. decurt
  6. decurtate
  7. decurtated
  8. decurtates
  9. decurtating
  10. decurtation
  11. decurtations

Source and license

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