Word.ws English Dictionary

percolate

/ˈpɜːkəleɪt//ˈpɝkəleɪt/

percolate verb: to pass a liquid through a porous substance; to filter.

Verb

percolate (third-person singular simple present percolates, present participle percolating, simple past and past participle percolated)

  1. (transitive) To pass a liquid through a porous substance; to filter.
    • Fluidextracts are liquid alcoholic preparations of uniform and definite strength, made by percolating drugs with menstrua, and concentrating a portion of the percolate […]1926, Joseph Price Remington, Ernest Fullerton Cook, Charles Herbert La Wall, Remington's Practice of Pharmacy
  2. (intransitive) To drain or seep through a porous substance.
    • Water percolates through sand.
  3. (transitive) To make (coffee) in a percolator.
    • I'll percolate some coffee.
    • Boiled, percolated, pressed, or filtered, black coffee ranges from a light tea-like drink to deep black brew.2005, Mark F. Sohn, Appalachian Home Cooking, page 36
  4. (intransitive) (of coffee) to be prepared by percolation; (of a coffee pot) to brew coffee in this way.
  5. (figuratively, intransitive) To spread slowly or gradually; to slowly become noticed or realised.
    • Reports on the pitiful state of many prisons have finally percolated through to the Home Office, which has promised to look into the situation.
    • Through media reports it percolated to the surface that the police investigation was profoundly flawed.

Noun

percolate (plural percolates)

  1. (rare) A liquid that has been percolated.
    • Fluidextracts are liquid alcoholic preparations of uniform and definite strength, made by percolating drugs with menstrua, and concentrating a portion of the percolate […]1926, Joseph Price Remington, Ernest Fullerton Cook, Charles Herbert La Wall, Remington's Practice of Pharmacy

percolate meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

percolate in Tamil

வடிகட்டு, துளைக்கசிவு, துளைவழிக் கசிந்து வடிகட்டல்

percolate in Urdu

نچوڑنا, ٹپکانا

percolate in Bengali

ছাঁকা, ধীরে ধীরে প্রবাহিত হওয়া

percolate in Malayalam

അരിച്ചിറങ്ങുക, ക്രമേണ വ്യാപിക്കുക, ഊറി വരുക, ഊറ്റുക
More languagesFewer languages
percolate in Kannada
ಒಡಿಗಟ್ಟು

Examples of percolate in a sentence

  • […] so that quite a perceptible interval of time elapsed before the true dimensions of the affront to his dignity commenced to percolate into the befogged and pain-racked convolutions of his brain.1914 October – 1916 July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mucker, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., published 31 October 1921...
  • Some are prepared to pay for placement; others use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) hoping their result percolates up the organic SERP.2011, Jaroslav Pokorny, Vaclav Repa, Karel Richta, Wita Wojtkowski, Henry Linger, Chris Barry, Michael Lang, Information Systems...
  • The teen, whose name is Zoi Lerma, has a large following on the network and her dance percolated around the world, with other celebrated TikTokkers adding their own versions.2020 November 13, Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, “Benee’s ‘Hey u x’ illustrates the upside of TikTok-dominated pop”, in Financial Times:

All 11 example sentences with percolate

Forms of percolate

Verb
third-person singular presentpercolates
present participlepercolating
past participlepercolated
pastpercolated
Noun
pluralpercolates

Past tense of percolate: percolated

Origin of percolate

Borrowed from Latin percōlātus, perfect passive participle of percōlō (“to filter”), itself, from per (“through”) + cōlō (“to strain”) (from cōlum (“a strainer”), of unknown origin); see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (noun-forming suffix).

Words formed from percolate

Questions about percolate

What does percolate mean?
Percolate means to pass a liquid through a porous substance; to filter.
What is percolate in Tamil?
Percolate in Tamil is வடிகட்டு, துளைக்கசிவு, துளைவழிக் கசிந்து வடிகட்டல். See Percolate meaning in Tamil.
How do you use percolate in a sentence?
[…] so that quite a perceptible interval of time elapsed before the true dimensions of the affront to his dignity commenced to percolate into the befogged and pain-racked convolutions of his brain.
What part of speech is percolate?
Percolate can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce percolate?
Percolate is pronounced /ˈpɜːkəleɪt/ (UK).
What is the past tense of percolate?
The past tense of percolate is percolated.

Words near percolate in the dictionary

  1. Percocet
  2. Percocets
  3. percoid
  4. percoidean
  5. percoids
  6. percolate
  7. percolated
  8. percolates
  9. percolating
  10. percolation
  11. percolation theories

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: percolate (page history and authors); percolate (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); percolate (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); percolate (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); percolate (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); percolate (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-gb-percolate.ogg, en-us-percolate.ogg, en-au-percolate.ogg.

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