perpetrate

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I speak not merely of obscurities, to perpetrate which is in every sense to stand in one's own light, but of sheer fatuities, tweakings-of-the-nose to our reverend mother-tongue, as either might have expressed it.

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Definitions (5)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. transitive verb To be responsible for; commit: perpetrate a crime; perpetrate a practical joke.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (2)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • The greatest evil we can perpetrate, is to make someone else do evil. —  David A
  • Waldo Loring was throughout a man frightened by the incredible magnitude and deviltry of the deed he was trying to perpetrate, and in his fear he sought comfort from the presence of his niece, Miss Glacia Loring. —  173 - Once Over Lightly
  • In his interrogation he told the Shin Bet that in 2006 he started conducting surveillance for Hamas and training to perpetrate a suicide attack against Israel. —  Top Stories - Google News
  • The Craddock Order literally granted a license to kill civilians to every NATO soldier under his command and required the soldiers to perpetrate a massacre of Afghani civilians who were merely 'suspected' of involvement in the drug trade. —  The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com
  • Some amongst us directly perpetrate (and many of the rest of the rest of us openly or tacitly support) the murder of billions of sentient beings (including “universally sacred†human animals) each year in factory “farms, †laboratories, and in faraway lands inhabited by the uninitiated whom we must bomb into the stone age that they might become enlightened enough to embrace the American Way of Life.
 

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same contextWord Family

perpetrate:   perpetrated
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin perpetrāre, perpetrāt-, to accomplish : per-, per- + patrāre, to bring about (from pater, father; see pəter- in Indo-European roots).

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Latin perpetratus, past participle of perpetrare, carry through (later Italian perpetrare = Spanish Portuguese perpetrar = French perpétrer), from per, through, + patrare, perform, akin to potis, able, potens, powerful: see potent.
 

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/ˈpərpətreɪt/
by American Heritage

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