Word.ws English Dictionary

periclitate

periclitate verb: to endanger.

Verb

periclitate (third-person singular simple present periclitates, present participle periclitating, simple past and past participle periclitated)

  1. (obsolete) To endanger.
    • And why so many grains of calomel? santa Maria! and such a dose of opium! periclitating, pardi! the whole family of ye, from head to tail.1765, Laurence Sterne, The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, volume 8, Penguin, published 2003, page 491

Forms of periclitate

third-person singular presentpericlitates
present participlepericlitating
past participlepericlitated
pastpericlitated

Origin of periclitate

From the past participle stem of Latin periclitari, from periculum (“experiment, risk”). Compare peril.

Questions about periclitate

What does periclitate mean?
Periclitate means to endanger.
What part of speech is periclitate?
Periclitate is a verb.
What is the past tense of periclitate?
The past tense of periclitate is periclitated.

Words near periclitate in the dictionary

  1. periclinally
  2. pericline
  3. periclines
  4. periclinia
  5. periclinium
  6. periclitate
  7. periclitated
  8. periclitates
  9. periclitating
  10. periclitation
  11. periclitations

Source and license

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