Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To make a crackling or popping sound; crackle.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To crackle; snap with a sharp, abrupt, and rapidly repeated sound, as salt in fire or during calcination.
- Specifically To rattle or crackle; use the crepitaculum, as a rattlesnake.
- In entomology, to eject suddenly from the anus, with a slight noise, a volatile fluid having somewhat the appearance of smoke and a strong pungent odor, as certain bombardier-beetles of the genus Brachinus and its allies.
Wiktionary
- v. To crackle, to make a crackling sound.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To make a series of small, sharp, rapidly repeated explosions or sounds, as salt in fire; to crackle; to snap.
WordNet 3.0
- v. make a crackling sound
Etymologies
- From Latin crepitare ("to creak, rattle, clatter, crackle"), frequentive of crepare ("to creak, rattle, etc., burst or break with a noise, crash"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin crepitāre, crepitāt-, to crackle, frequentative of crepāre, to creak. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“You will take care to open your mouth, crepitate shoo shoo to Band-aid dollop.”
“Kate could hardly remember now the dry rigid pallor of the heat, when the whole earth seemed to crepitate viciously with dry malevolence: like memory gone dry and sterile, hellish.”
“The sixpences do not "bang" in this country: they crepitate, they crackle, as though shot from a Maxim quick-firer.”
“As a matter of historical interest, the obsolete crepitate was used in the 19th century, but the term did not specify whether the gas being discharged was gastric or rectal.”
“He also missed the essential semantic component of to crepitate, namely, ` to expell gas noisily, 'regardless of whether as a burp or a fart.”
“John Grisham’s sentences thud and crepitate all over the page, and he has become a literary tycoon.”
“a light brick-red colour, and crepitate under the finger.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘crepitate’.
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words you have probably never heard o...
a list of words.
brabejum, braccate, braccial, bo'zal, brachiate, brachis'tochrone, brail, bran'card, bran'chiobdel'la, brassica, brasenia, euclase and 97 more...
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New words
new words or spelling issues
voluble, Metagrobolize, salubrious, calumny, fugacity, withdrawal, bourse, hypertrophy, leitmotif, argot, improvident, damask and 237 more...
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phrontistery - c
from phrontistery.info
czardas, cytometer, cytology, cytheromania, cystoscope, cystolith, cyrenaic, cypseline, cyprinoid, cyphonism, cynophobia, cytogenesis and 1298 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Ballardian
All things descriptive from JG
Ballardoperation mindfuck, pataphysics, wahrheitssensible..., polymorphism, postprandial, covalent, stygian, lucus a non lucendo, kafkaesque, leitmotif, fugacious, ablate and 77 more...
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The Pits
armpit, pit, pits, cockpit, pity, pithy, pit bull terrier, pit boss, pit stop, pitcher, fire pit, peach pit and 76 more...
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Verbages
puddle, kowtow, tessellate, defalcate, embezzle, enkindle, ablate, frivol, moonlight, tongue-tie, gobble, pettifog and 58 more...
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ICE
quincunx, adoxography, panjundrum, breloque, surd, scripturient, rousant, favrile, embouchure, aquarelle, griffonage, sussultatory and 234 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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wordhoard
dilatory, ataraxia, hermit, cabana, hut, dome, vestigial, porcine, crapulous, usufruct, curmudgeon, bombastic and 229 more...
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words
diplopic, dolorous, farrago, surety, scuttlebutt, Arabesque, infarct, neurasthenia, lambent, expurge, univocal, simper and 395 more...
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Lolita
Words to remember from Nabokov's "Lolita"
concordance, limned, lurid, puerility, variorum, perspicacious, exigency, acrostic, solipsism, mnemosyne, involution, fatidic and 227 more...
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Lolita
Words compiled while reading Lolita
lolita, solecism, cognomen, etiolate, tendresse, expiatory, filch, paroxysm, arabesques, sibilant, manque, uranist and 181 more...
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Zoological Terms
Terms used in Zoology
papilionaceous, actinost, gressorial, exuviate, nitid, trochal, demiss, loculus, crebrity, limes, pachytrichous, pachydactyl and 319 more...
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Papageno's Words, Pt. I
hobbledehoy, absquatulate, chthonic, prolix, ululate, internecine, verisimilitude, animadversion, concupiscence, vertiginous, cucullate, lucubrate and 1554 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for crepitate.
knitandpurl "Applause crepitates, the magician bows, and the wedding party has still not arrived."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 181 of the NYRB paperback Nov 7, 2010
asativum This belongs on someone's not-what-you-think list. Jun 20, 2008
yarb Night, crepitating slowly, beat by beat.
- Russel Hoban, Kleinzeit Jun 20, 2008