Word.ws English Dictionary

obliviate

obliviate verb: to forget; to wipe from existence.

Verb

obliviate (third-person singular simple present obliviates, present participle obliviating, simple past and past participle obliviated)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To forget; to wipe from existence.
    • Near-synonym: obliterate
    • Time has not yet obliviated the veneration of our jacobins for France, while she was seething with faction and blood […]1811, George Grennell, (Please provide the book title or journal name)
    Synonyms:
    obliterate

Synonyms of obliviate

Forms of obliviate

third-person singular presentobliviates
present participleobliviating
past participleobliviated
pastobliviated

Origin of obliviate

From oblivion + -ate (verb-forming suffix), itself either from Old French oblivion (13th century) or directly from Latin oblīviō, ultimately from oblīvīscor (“to forget”), originally “even out, smooth over, erase”; further perhaps from ob- (“against, towards”) + the root of lēvis (“smooth”) + -scor (“forming inchoative verbs”).

Questions about obliviate

What does obliviate mean?
Obliviate means to forget; to wipe from existence.
What part of speech is obliviate?
Obliviate is a verb.
What is the past tense of obliviate?
The past tense of obliviate is obliviated.

Words near obliviate in the dictionary

  1. obliterature
  2. oblivescence
  3. oblivescent
  4. oblivial
  5. obliviality
  6. obliviate
  7. obliviated
  8. obliviates
  9. obliviating
  10. obliviation
  11. oblivion

Source and license

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