Word.ws English Dictionary

desecate

desecate verb: to cut, as with a scythe; to mow. Also the obsolete spelling of desiccate.

Verb

desecate (third-person singular simple present desecates, present participle desecating, simple past and past participle desecated)

  1. (obsolete, rare) To cut, as with a scythe; to mow.
    • So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and desecated public good which has ever been conferred on mankind.1798, Edmund Burke, The Beauties of the Late Right Hon. Edmund Burke, volume 2
    • Now, as we have already remarked, it is the province of the eclectic philosophy to search out the central truth of each system and desecate it from the mass of commingled truth and error.1841, The Methodist Quarterly Review, volume 23, page 348

Also used as

desecate is also the obsolete spelling of desiccate.

Forms of desecate

third-person singular presentdesecates
present participledesecating
past participledesecated
pastdesecated

Origin of desecate

First attested in 1623; borrowed from Medieval Latin dēsecātus, a variant of dēsectus, the perfect passive participle of dēsecō (“to cut off”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix).

Questions about desecate

What does desecate mean?
Desecate means to cut, as with a scythe; to mow.
What part of speech is desecate?
Desecate is a verb.
What is the past tense of desecate?
The past tense of desecate is desecated.

Words near desecate in the dictionary

  1. deseasonalizing
  2. deseat
  3. deseated
  4. deseating
  5. deseats
  6. desecate
  7. desecated
  8. desecates
  9. desecating
  10. desecrate
  11. desecrated

Source and license

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