Word.ws English Dictionary

inviscate

inviscate verb: to daub, catch, or entangle with glue or birdlime or other viscous matter.

Verb

inviscate (third-person singular simple present inviscates, present participle inviscating, simple past and past participle inviscated)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To daub, catch, or entangle with glue or birdlime or other viscous matter.
    • […] withall its food being flies and such as suddenly escape, it hath in the tongue a mucous and slymy extremity, whereby upon a sudden emission it inviscates and tangleth those insects.1650, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Book 3, Chap. 21, "Of the Cameleon"

Forms of inviscate

third-person singular presentinviscates
present participleinviscating
past participleinviscated
pastinviscated

Origin of inviscate

From Latin inviscatus, past participle of inviscare (“to birdlime”), from in- (“in”) + viscum, viscus (“mistletoe, birdlime”).

Questions about inviscate

What does inviscate mean?
Inviscate means to daub, catch, or entangle with glue or birdlime or other viscous matter.
What part of speech is inviscate?
Inviscate is a verb.
What is the past tense of inviscate?
The past tense of inviscate is inviscated.

Words near inviscate in the dictionary

  1. inviron
  2. invironed
  3. invironing
  4. invirons
  5. invis
  6. inviscate
  7. inviscated
  8. inviscates
  9. inviscating
  10. inviscation
  11. inviscerate

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: inviscate (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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