phosphate
/ˈfɒsfeɪt//ˈfɑsfeɪt/
phosphate noun: any salt or ester of phosphoric acid.
Noun
phosphate (countable and uncountable, plural phosphates)
- Any salt or ester of phosphoric acid.
- Make sure you don’t use detergents with phosphates or nonylphenol ethoxylate surfactants, but that information is rarely available on the labels.2009 February 26, Julie Scelfo, “When It Comes to Detergents, What’s the Least Irresponsible Choice?”, in The New York Times
- Bony fishes were judicious in their use of phosphate as a building material: their teeth, a few parts of the skeleton, and that was it.2022 November 4, Natalie Angier, “The Sad Fate of the Ancient, Well-Shelled Mariners”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on...
- Any fertiliser containing phosphate compounds.
- Guano (containing high levels of phosphates and harvested for the fertiliser industry).
- A carbonated soft drink containing phosphoric acid, often flavored with a fruit-based syrup.
- An egg phosphate is a phosphate to which an egg has been added in the proper manner. While an egg phosphate can be flavored with any syrup that makes a good phosphate, still the standard flavor by long usage has com to be orange […]1920, Irving P. Fox, The Spatula, page 27
- “This man here,” she said, “can make you a cherry Coke or a chocolate Coke or a phosphate — a chocolate phosphate or. “Vanilla phosphate,” the man helped, “cherry phosphate, orange phosphate, lime phosphate, lemon phosphate,2002, Michael Raleigh, In the castle of the Flynns, page 180
Verb
phosphate (third-person singular simple present phosphates, present participle phosphating, simple past and past participle phosphated)
- To treat or coat with a phosphate or phosphoric acid.
phosphate meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
phosphate in Hindi
- फॉस्फेट करना, फॉस्फेट
phosphate in Tamil
- எரியகி உப்பு, மணிச்சத்து, பொசுபேற்று, எரிகை
phosphate in Marathi
- फॉस्फेट
phosphate in Urdu
- فاسفیٹ کرنا, فاسفیٹ
More languagesFewer languages
- phosphate in Bengali
- ফসফেট, ফসফেটের প্রতি
- phosphate in Telugu
- ఫాస్ఫేట్
- phosphate in Malayalam
- ഫോസ്ഫേറ്റിലേക്ക്, ഫോസ്ഫേറ്റ്, ഫോസ്ഫറ്റിലേക്ക്
- phosphate in Kannada
- ಫಾಸ್ಫೇಟ್
- phosphate in Punjabi
- ਫਾਸਫੇਟ, ਫਾਸਫੇਟ ਤੱਕ
- phosphate in Gujarati
- ફોસ્ફેટ, ફોસ્ફેટને
- phosphate in Odia
- ଫସଫେଟ୍, ଫସଫେଟକୁ
- phosphate in Nepali
- फोस्फेट, फस्फेट
Examples of phosphate in a sentence
- Nauru imports foods from Australia because phosphate mining destroyed land for farming.
- The prosthesis has a bilayered calcium phosphate coating.
- Attempts to fuse and defluorinate rock phosphate by feeding the finely ground material into the flame of a blast lamp were not successful.
Forms of phosphate
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | phosphates |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | phosphates |
| present participle | phosphating |
| past participle | phosphated |
| past | phosphated |
Origin of phosphate
From French phosphate. By surface analysis, phosphoric acid + -ate (“salt or ester”).
From phosphoric acid + -ate (verb-forming suffix).
Words formed from phosphate
- acylphosphate
- adenosine phosphate
- alkylglycerone phosphate synthase
- alkyl phosphate
- aluminophosphate
- ammonium phosphate
- aryldialkylphosphatase
- biphosphate
- bisphosphate
- boron phosphate
- borophosphate
- cadmium phosphate
- calcium dihydrogen phosphate
- calcium phosphate
- carbamoyl phosphate
- chalcogenophosphate
- chlorophosphate
- creatine phosphate
- creatinolfosfate
- cyclophosphate
- decaphosphate
- diammonium phosphate
- dichlorophosphate
- dichlorothiophosphate
- difluorodioxophosphate
- difluorodithiophosphate
- difluorophosphate
- difluorothiophosphate
- dihydrogen phosphate
- diphosphate
- disodium hydrogen phosphate
- disodium phosphate
- dithiophosphate
- ecothiopate
- ferric phosphate
- ferrous phosphate
- fluophosphate
- fluorophosphate
- fosfestrol
- fructose 6-phosphate
- galactosephosphate
- glucose 6-phosphate
- glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency
- glucose-6-phosphate isomerase
- glycerolphosphate
- halophosphate
- hexakisphosphate
- hexametaphosphate
- hexaphosphate
- high energy phosphate
- hydrogen phosphate
- hydroxyphosphate
- hydroxypropyl starch phosphate
- hypophosphate
- inorganic phosphate
- inositol phosphate
- iron phosphate
- isopropylphosphate
- magnesium phosphate
- metaphosphate
Phrases with phosphate
- sugar phosphate
- triose phosphate
- tributyl phosphate
- tricresyl phosphate
- trisodium phosphate
- polyestradiol phosphate
- pentose phosphate pathway
- sodium hydrogen phosphate
- sodium aluminium phosphate
- phosphate acetyltransferase
- phosphate butyryltransferase
- phosphated distarch phosphate
3 more phrasesFewer phrases
Questions about phosphate
- What does phosphate mean?
- Phosphate means any salt or ester of phosphoric acid.
- What is phosphate in Hindi?
- Phosphate in Hindi is फॉस्फेट करना, फॉस्फेट. See Phosphate meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is phosphate?
- Phosphate can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce phosphate?
- Phosphate is pronounced /ˈfɒsfeɪt/ (UK).
- What is the plural of phosphate?
- The plural of phosphate is phosphates.
Words near phosphate in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: phosphate (page history and authors); phosphate (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); phosphate (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); phosphate (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); phosphate (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); phosphate (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); phosphate (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); phosphate (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); phosphate (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); phosphate (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); phosphate (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); phosphate (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); phosphate (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model 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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Tesco250-phosphate.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vininn126-phosphate.wav.
Cite this entry: “phosphate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/phosphate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.