flagellate

/ˈflæ.d͡ʒəˌleɪt/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

flagellate verb: to whip or scourge.

Verb

flagellate (third-person singular simple present flagellates, present participle flagellating, simple past and past participle flagellated)

(transitive) To whip or scourge.
- Red welts rising from a flagellated back1976 December 11, David Holland, “A Conversation With Maitresse”, in Gay Community News, volume 4, number 24, page 13
(idiomatic, transitive) To harshly chide or chastise, to reprimand.
(transitive) Of a spermatozoon, to move its tail back and forth.
- The gigantic egg sits, and the frantic and tiny sperm flagellates its tail to cross vast distances on its quest for dissolution in the huge egg.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 63

Adjective

US/fləˈd͡ʒɛ.lət/

flagellate (comparative more flagellate, superlative most flagellate)

Resembling a whip.
Having flagella.

Noun

US/fləˈd͡ʒɛ.lət/

flagellate (plural flagellates)

Any organism that has flagella.

flagellate meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

flagellate in Tamil

கசையுயிர், சவுக்குயிர், சவுக்குள்ள, சவுக்குமுளையான

flagellate in Urdu

کوڑے مارنا

flagellate in Bengali

চাবুক মারা, প্রহার করা

flagellate in Malayalam

whip, flog, beat: ചമ്മട്ടികൊണ്ടടിക്കുക, ചാട്ടകൊണ്ടടിക്കുക, ചാട്ടയ്ക്കടിക്കുക, ചാട്ടവാറുകൊണ്ടടിക്കുക, പ്രഹരിക്ക, അടിക്കുക

More languagesFewer languages

flagellate in Kannada: ಚಾವಟಿಯಿಂದ ಹೊಡಿ, ಕೊರಡೆಯಿಂದ ಬಾರಿಸು, ಬಾರಿಸು, ಚಾಟಿಯೇಟು ಕೊಡು
flagellate in Vietnamese: trùng roi

Examples of flagellate in a sentence

The benthic microflora of marine sands includes bacteria, blue-green bacteria (cyanobacteria), autotrophic flagellates, and diatoms.
Haploid flagellated spores dominate the life cycle of Chlamydomonas, a single-celled, freshwater chlorophyte (Figure 20.13).
I can think of a few colleagues who flagellate themselves into trash-binning fully adequate text.

All 11 example sentences with flagellate

Forms of flagellate

Verb
third-person singular present	flagellates
present participle	flagellating
past participle	flagellated
past	flagellated
Adjective
comparative	more flagellate
superlative	most flagellate
Noun
plural	flagellates

Origin of flagellate

First attested in 1623; borrowed from Latin flagellātus perfect passive participle of flagellō (“to whip, flog”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix).

First attested in 1867; from flagellum + -ate (adjective-forming suffix) as well as Latin flagellum + -ate. The noun was substantivized from the adjective, see -ate (noun-forming suffix).

Questions about flagellate

What does flagellate mean?: Flagellate means to whip or scourge.
What is flagellate in Tamil?: Flagellate in Tamil is கசையுயிர், சவுக்குயிர், சவுக்குள்ள. See Flagellate meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is flagellate?: Flagellate can be a verb, an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce flagellate?: Flagellate is pronounced /ˈflæ.d͡ʒəˌleɪt/ (US).
What is the past tense of flagellate?: The past tense of flagellate is flagellated.

Words near flagellate in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: flagellate (page history and authors); flagellate (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); flagellate (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); flagellate (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); flagellate (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); flagellate (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-VGPaleontologist-flagellate (verb, to whip).wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Fae7-flagellate.wav.

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