Word.ws English Dictionary

interdigitate

interdigitate verb: to fold or lock together, as when the fingers of one hand are laced between those of the other.

Verb

interdigitate (third-person singular simple present interdigitates, present participle interdigitating, simple past and past participle interdigitated)

  1. (transitive) To fold or lock together, as when the fingers of one hand are laced between those of the other.
  2. (intransitive) To become folded or locked together, like the fingers of a folded hand.
    • Figure 1.4 shows a modern thyristor encapsulated in a presspack housing and Figure 1.5 illustrates a typical interdigitated gate geometry in a high-power thyristor; the black areas indicate silicon ( Si0₂ ) and the white areas the Al metallisation.1998, J. Arrillaga, High Voltage Direct Current Transmission, page 6
  3. (figuratively, transitive) To intermingle; to present alternately items from one group and then another.
    • Thirdly, I continue to attempt to interdigitate the taxa in our flora with taxa of the remainder of the world.1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page viii

Forms of interdigitate

third-person singular presentinterdigitates
present participleinterdigitating
past participleinterdigitated
pastinterdigitated

Origin of interdigitate

From inter- + digitate.

Words formed from interdigitate

Questions about interdigitate

What does interdigitate mean?
Interdigitate means to fold or lock together, as when the fingers of one hand are laced between those of the other.
What part of speech is interdigitate?
Interdigitate is a verb.
What is the past tense of interdigitate?
The past tense of interdigitate is interdigitated.

Words near interdigitate in the dictionary

  1. interdiffusions
  2. interdigestive
  3. interdigit
  4. interdigital
  5. interdigitally
  6. interdigitate
  7. interdigitated
  8. interdigitates
  9. interdigitating
  10. interdigitation
  11. interdigitations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: interdigitate (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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