Word.ws English Dictionary

defæcate

defæcate is the archaic spelling of defecate.

Meaning of defecate

Verb

defecate (third-person singular simple present defecates, present participle defecating, simple past and past participle defecated)

  1. (intransitive) To excrete feces from one's bowels.
  2. (archaic, transitive) To pass (something) as excrement; to purge.
  3. (also, archaic, figuratively, transitive) To clean (something) of dregs, impurities, etc.; to purify.
    • [I]f vve defæcate the notion from materiality, […] it vvill be as hard to apprehend, as that an empty vviſh ſhould remove Mountains: a ſuppoſition vvhich if realized, vvould relieve Siſyphus.1661, Joseph Glanvill, chapter III, in The Vanity of Dogmatizing: Or Confidence in Opinions. […], London: […] E. C[otes] for Henry Eversden […], →OCLC, page 22

See all 4 meanings of defecate

Forms of defæcate

third-person singular presentdefæcates
present participledefæcating
past participledefæcated
pastdefæcated

Questions about defæcate

What is defæcate the archaic spelling of?
Defæcate is the archaic spelling of defecate.

Words near defæcate in the dictionary

  1. defyers
  2. defying
  3. defying belief
  4. defyingly
  5. Defynnog
  6. defæcate
  7. defæcated
  8. defæcates
  9. defæcating
  10. defæcation
  11. defæcations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: defæcate (page history and authors); defecate (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: “defæcate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/def%C3%A6cate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.