Word.ws English Dictionary

interrogate

UK/ɪnˈtɛɹəɡeɪt//ɪnˈtɛɹəɡeɪt/

interrogate verb: to question or quiz, especially in a thorough or aggressive manner.

Verb

interrogate (third-person singular simple present interrogates, present participle interrogating, simple past and past participle interrogated)

  1. (transitive) To question or quiz, especially in a thorough or aggressive manner.
    • The police interrogated the suspect at some length before they let him go.
  2. (transitive) To query (something); to request information from (something).
    • to interrogate a database
  3. (literary, transitive) To examine (something) critically.
    • Griffin's approach allows her to reveal Billie Holiday's resilient strength of character and to interrogate the racism she endured, which was as tragic as her personal mistakes.2015, Rita Kiki Edozie, Curtis Stokes, Malcolm X's Michigan Worldview: An Exemplar for Contemporary Black Studies, Michigan State University Press
    • Within the contemporary US context, the construct of childhood innocence is a powerful social myth that structures children’s social relations and culture and informs their rights and status in society. In this article, I interrogate the construct of childhood innocence to examine how it operates...2019 February 1, J. C. Garden, “Interrogating innocence: “Childhood” as exclusionary social practice”, in Childhood, volume 26, number 1, page 54

interrogate meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

interrogate in Hindi

to question or quiz
प्रश्न करना praśna karnā, पूछताछ करना pūchtāch karnā

interrogate in Tamil

விசாரணை செய்

interrogate in Urdu

پوچھنا, سوال کرنا

interrogate in Bengali

জিজ্ঞাসাবাদ করা, জেরা করা, প্রশ্ন করা
More languagesFewer languages
interrogate in Malayalam
ചോദ്യം ചെയ്യുക, അന്വേഷിക്കുക, വിവരങ്ങൾ ശേഖരിക്കുക, സന്ദേശങ്ങൾ അയയ്ക്കുക
interrogate in Kannada
ಎಡೆಬಿಡದೆ ಪ್ರಶ್ನಿಸು, ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆ ಕೇಳಿ ಪರೀಕ್ಷಿಸು, ಕೇಳಿತಿಳಿ, ಕೇಳ್ವಿಕೇಳು
interrogate in Sanskrit
पृच्छति pṛcchati
interrogate in Arabic
حَقَّقَ مَعَ ḥaqqaqa maʕa, اِسْتَجْوَبَ istajwaba, اِسْتَنْطَقَ istanṭaqa
interrogate in Persian
بازجویی کردن bâz-juyi kardan, استنطاق کردن estentâq kardan, بازپرسی کردن bâzporsi kardan
interrogate in Thai
สอบถาม sɔ̀ɔp-tǎam, ซักถาม sák-tǎam, ไถ่ tài, สอบปากคำ
interrogate in Vietnamese
thẩm vấn, hỏi cung

Examples of interrogate in a sentence

  • As a prisoner of war, he was interrogated by his enemy captors.
  • Our twenty-four-person crew was held at a military barracks on the island and interrogated.
  • You have the putative assumption, because everybody is interrogated, that everybody who has entered is heterosexual.

All 27 example sentences with interrogate

Forms of interrogate

third-person singular presentinterrogates
present participleinterrogating
past participleinterrogated
pastinterrogated

Past tense of interrogate: interrogated

Origin of interrogate

Learned borrowing from Latin interrogātus, the perfect passive participle of Latin interrogō (“to inquire, interrogate”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix).

Words formed from interrogate

Questions about interrogate

What does interrogate mean?
Interrogate means to question or quiz, especially in a thorough or aggressive manner.
What is interrogate in Hindi?
Interrogate in Hindi is प्रश्न करना (praśna karnā), पूछताछ करना (pūchtāch karnā). See Interrogate meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is interrogate?
Interrogate is a verb.
How do you pronounce interrogate?
Interrogate is pronounced /ɪnˈtɛɹəɡeɪt/ (UK).
What is the past tense of interrogate?
The past tense of interrogate is interrogated.

Words near interrogate in the dictionary

  1. interrogable
  2. interrogant
  3. interrogants
  4. interrogatability
  5. interrogatable
  6. interrogate
  7. interrogated
  8. interrogatee
  9. interrogatees
  10. interrogates
  11. interrogatest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: interrogate (page history and authors); interrogate (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); interrogate (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Interrogate (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); interrogate (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); interrogate (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-interrogate.ogg.

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