Word.ws English Dictionary

dissipating

dissipating is the present participle and gerund of dissipate.

Meaning of dissipate

Verb

dissipate (third-person singular simple present dissipates, present participle dissipating, simple past and past participle dissipated)

  1. (transitive) To drive away, disperse.
    • August 1773, James Cook, journal entry
      I soon dissipated his fears.
  2. (transitive) To use up or waste; squander.
    • The vast wealth […] was in three years dissipated.1679–1715, Gilbert Burnet, “(please specify the page)”, in The History of the Reformation of the Church of England., London: […] T[homas] H[odgkin] for Richard Chiswell, […]
  3. (intransitive) To vanish by dispersion.
  4. To cause energy to be lost through its conversion to heat.
    • The traction motors serve as generators when dynamic braking is used, the generated output being dissipated in fan-cooled resistance banks mounted in a removable roof section.1960 April, “English Electric diesels for the Sudan Railways”, in Trains Illustrated, page 218
  5. (colloquial, dated, intransitive) To be dissolute in conduct.

See all 6 meanings of dissipate

Questions about dissipating

What is dissipating the present participle and gerund of?
Dissipating is the present participle and gerund of dissipate.

Words near dissipating in the dictionary

  1. dissipater
  2. dissipaters
  3. dissipates
  4. dissipatest
  5. dissipateth
  6. dissipating
  7. dissipation
  8. dissipation factor
  9. dissipation function
  10. dissipation functions
  11. dissipation trail

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dissipating (page history and authors); dissipate (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: “dissipating.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dissipating. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.