Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To make a crackling or popping sound; crackle.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • 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.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To make a series of small, sharp, rapidly repeated explosions or sounds, as salt in fire; to crackle; to snap.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To crackle, to make a crackling sound.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb make a crackling sound

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin crepitāre, crepitāt-, to crackle, frequentative of crepāre, to creak.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin crepitare ("to creak, rattle, clatter, crackle"), frequentive of crepare ("to creak, rattle, etc., burst or break with a noise, crash").

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Examples

  • You will take care to open your mouth, crepitate shoo shoo to Band-aid dollop.

    Archive 2008-08-01 Lemon Hound 2008

  • You will take care to open your mouth, crepitate shoo shoo to Band-aid dollop.

    derek beaulieu on blert Lemon Hound 2008

  • 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 Plumed Serpent 2003

  • The sixpences do not "bang" in this country: they crepitate, they crackle, as though shot from a Maxim quick-firer.

    America To-day, Observations and Reflections William Archer 1890

  • 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.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol V No 4 1984

  • He also missed the essential semantic component of to crepitate, namely, ` to expell gas noisily, 'regardless of whether as a burp or a fart.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol VI No 3 1984

  • John Grisham’s sentences thud and crepitate all over the page, and he has become a literary tycoon.

    The Fiddler in the Subway Gene Weingarten 2010

  • John Grisham’s sentences thud and crepitate all over the page, and he has become a literary tycoon.

    The Fiddler in the Subway Gene Weingarten 2010

  • John Grisham’s sentences thud and crepitate all over the page, and he has become a literary tycoon.

    The Fiddler in the Subway Gene Weingarten 2010

  • John Grisham’s sentences thud and crepitate all over the page, and he has become a literary tycoon.

    The Fiddler in the Subway Gene Weingarten 2010

Comments

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  • Night, crepitating slowly, beat by beat.

    - Russel Hoban, Kleinzeit

    June 20, 2008

  • This belongs on someone's not-what-you-think list.

    June 20, 2008

  • "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

    November 7, 2010

  • It’s terribly hard to emulate

    How speakers of Zulu articulate.

    You must learn the tricks

    Of consonant clicks-

    To enunciate you must crepitate.

    January 28, 2018