Word.ws English Dictionary

echolocate

echolocate verb: to locate by means of echolocation.

Verb

echolocate (third-person singular simple present echolocates, present participle echolocating, simple past and past participle echolocated)

  1. (intransitive, transitive) To locate by means of echolocation.
    • Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close (less than half a meter) above vegetation and effectively blending into the clutter of echoes that the bat receives from the leaves and stems around them.2013 May-June, William E. Conner, “An Acoustic Arms Race”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, archived from the original on 16 Jun 2013, pages 206–7

Forms of echolocate

third-person singular presentecholocates
present participleecholocating
past participleecholocated
pastecholocated

Origin of echolocate

From echo + locate. Coined by American zoologist Donald Griffin in 1944.

Words formed from echolocate

Questions about echolocate

What does echolocate mean?
Echolocate means to locate by means of echolocation.
What part of speech is echolocate?
Echolocate is a verb.
What is the past tense of echolocate?
The past tense of echolocate is echolocated.

Words near echolocate in the dictionary

  1. echolalics
  2. echoless
  3. echolessness
  4. echolike
  5. echolocalization
  6. echolocate
  7. echolocated
  8. echolocates
  9. echolocating
  10. echolocation
  11. echolocational

Source and license

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