Word.ws English Dictionary

sporulate

sporulate verb: to produce spores.

Verb

sporulate (third-person singular simple present sporulates, present participle sporulating, simple past and past participle sporulated)

  1. (intransitive) To produce spores.
    • She was also their science teacher and had taught them about slime molds in biology class, about how the singular organisms came together to form a multicellular body in order to sporulate and reproduce, before breaking apart again.2021, Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness, Canongate Books (2022), pages 95–96
  2. (transitive) To convert into spores.
    • A part of the protoplasm is not sporulated but forms a capillitium.1885, Edwin Ray Lankester, Encyclopædia Britannica, volume vol. XIX. 854/1

Adjective

sporulate (not comparable)

  1. That produces spores

Forms of sporulate

third-person singular presentsporulates
present participlesporulating
past participlesporulated
pastsporulated

Origin of sporulate

From sporule + -ate (verb-forming suffix).

From sporul(e) + -ate (adjective-forming suffix).

Words formed from sporulate

Questions about sporulate

What does sporulate mean?
Sporulate means to produce spores.
What part of speech is sporulate?
Sporulate can be a verb or an adjective.
What is the past tense of sporulate?
The past tense of sporulate is sporulated.

Words near sporulate in the dictionary

  1. sporty
  2. sporty luxe
  3. sporula
  4. sporulae
  5. sporular
  6. sporulate
  7. sporulated
  8. sporulates
  9. sporulating
  10. sporulation
  11. sporulations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sporulate (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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