marinate

/ˈmæɹɪneɪt/

marinate verb: to allow a sauce or flavoring mixture to absorb into something; to steep or soak something in a marinade to flavor or prepare it for cooking.

Verb

marinate (third-person singular simple present marinates, present participle marinating, simple past and past participle marinated)

(ergative, transitive) To allow a sauce or flavoring mixture to absorb into something; to steep or soak something in a marinade to flavor or prepare it for cooking.
- You'll get a better flavour from the chicken if you marinate it first.
- After the chicken has marinated for two hours, discard the remaining marinade.
(ambitransitive) To allow a substance to be absobed into the hair or scalp.
- oblucy:
  "vinegar... to marinate the scalp...
  oil... to lubricate the scalp..."1992 September 3, Laura Potler (GSFC), “own private idaho”, in alt.peeves (Usenet)
- Let your scalp marinate while you shave.2000, The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Men: From Heart Disease and Headaches to Flabby Abs and Fatigue, Random House Publishing Group, page 243
(ambitransitive) Of a substance, to absorb into the hair or scalp.
- a rejuvenating oil you use to saturate your hair and let it marinate from 15 minutes to 2 hours2003 November 22, fig, “I met THE Philip B. today!”, in alt.fashion (Usenet)
- [...] hair rather than the scalp, but as always, experiment. You can also play around with how long you leave the mixture on your head — some people have better results after letting the ACV marinate for a few minutes.2015, Savannah Born, Shampoo-Free: A DIY Guide to Putting Down the Bottle and Embracing Healthier, Happier Hair (ebook), Skyhorse Publishing, unnumbered page
(intransitive) Of ideas or feelings, to mentally develop over time.
(figuratively, informal) Especially of a haircut, to settle in and for one to get used to it.
- It's not a bad haircut! You just got to let it marinate!

Adjective

marinate (not comparable)

(rare) Marinated.

marinate meaning in Tamil, Malayalam, Indonesian and Thai

marinate in Tamil

soak in marinade: ஊறு ūṟu, ஊறவை ūṟavai

marinate in Malayalam

soak, souse, steep: ഉപ്പിലിടുക, ഉപ്പിട്ടുവയ്ക്കുക, വിനാഗിരിയിടുക, വിനാഗിരിയിൽ മുക്കിവയ്ക്കുക, സോസിൽ കുതിർക്കുക, സോസു ചേർക്കുക

marinate in Thai

soak in marinade: หมัก màk

More languagesFewer languages

marinate in Vietnamese: ướp

Examples of marinate in a sentence

Adidas : Grilled chicken feet skewers , marinated and cooked to perfection .
They specialize in fromage blancs and firmer cheeses marinated in herbed olive oil.
How much marinade you need depends on the amount of food to be marinated.

All 23 example sentences with marinate

Forms of marinate

third-person singular present	marinates
present participle	marinating
past participle	marinated
past	marinated

Past tense of marinate: marinated

Origin of marinate

First attested in 1645; adapted from either French mariner or the earlier attested Italian marinare (“to pickle, marinate”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from Late Latin marina (“brine, salt water”), short for aqua marina (“sea water”), from Latin marinus (“marine, of the sea”), from Latin mare (“the sea”) from Proto-Indo-European *móri (“the sea”).

Words formed from marinate

Questions about marinate

What does marinate mean?: Marinate means to allow a sauce or flavoring mixture to absorb into something; to steep or soak something in a marinade to flavor or prepare it for cooking.
What is marinate in Tamil?: Marinate in Tamil is ஊறு (ūṟu), ஊறவை (ūṟavai). See Marinate meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is marinate?: Marinate can be a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce marinate?: Marinate is pronounced /ˈmæɹɪneɪt/.
What is the past tense of marinate?: The past tense of marinate is marinated.

Words near marinate in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: marinate (page history and authors); marinate (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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)-Vealhurl-marinate.wav.

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