Word.ws English Dictionary

lancinate

lancinate verb: to pierce or stab (as with a lance); to lance.

Verb

lancinate (third-person singular simple present lancinates, present participle lancinating, simple past and past participle lancinated)

  1. (transitive) To pierce or stab (as with a lance); to lance.
    • Through a minuscule pinhole in that lead block, he could now direct tiny, controlled doses of a furiously potent beam of X-rays [...] to lancinate any cancer cell to death.2010, Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies, Fourth Estate (2011), page 159

Synonyms of lancinate

27 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of lancinate

Forms of lancinate

third-person singular presentlancinates
present participlelancinating
past participlelancinated
pastlancinated

Origin of lancinate

First attested in 1603; borrowed from Latin lancinātus, perfect passive participle of lancinō, see -ate (verb-forming suffix). Cognate with French lanciner.

Questions about lancinate

What does lancinate mean?
Lancinate means to pierce or stab (as with a lance); to lance.
What part of speech is lancinate?
Lancinate is a verb.
What is the past tense of lancinate?
The past tense of lancinate is lancinated.

Words near lancinate in the dictionary

  1. Lancias
  2. lancier
  3. lanciers
  4. lanciform
  5. lancin
  6. lancinate
  7. lancinated
  8. lancinates
  9. lancinating
  10. lancination
  11. lancinations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lancinate (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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