decontaminate
to make (an object or area) safe for unprotected personnel by removing, neutralizing, or destroying any harmful substance, as radioactive material or poisonous gas.
to make free of contamination; purify: to decontaminate a sickroom.
Origin of decontaminate
1Other words from decontaminate
- de·con·tam·i·na·tion, noun
- de·con·tam·i·na·tive, adjective
- de·con·tam·i·na·tor, noun
Words Nearby decontaminate
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use decontaminate in a sentence
A more effective air disinfection strategy is to rapidly decontaminate the air within the room where person-to-person transmission occurs.
If We're Going to Live With COVID-19, It's Time to Clean Our Indoor Air Properly | Edward A Nardell | February 1, 2022 | TimeSome successfully decontaminated N95s in laboratory settings by using heat, boiling water, or hydrogen peroxide spray.
The ultimate guide to reusing and buying N95 masks | Sandra Gutierrez G. | January 13, 2022 | Popular-SciencePincus devotes several chapters to subsequent efforts by the government and Congress to compensate the Marshallese, as well as the several failed attempts to decontaminate their islands.
Experimenting with hydrogen bombs, the U.S. blew lives apart | Gregg Herken | November 5, 2021 | Washington PostHere, a bubbling tank of near-freezing water and chemicals decontaminates the birds and reduces their temperature to limit bacterial growth.
America’s Food Safety System Failed to Stop a Salmonella Epidemic. It’s Still Making People Sick. | by Bernice Yeung, Michael Grabell, Irena Hwang and Mollie Simon | October 29, 2021 | ProPublicaMasks that can’t be washed, like respirators, can be left out in the sun for an hour to be decontaminated, Marr says.
Is It Time to Wear a Better Mask for COVID-19? We Asked the Experts | Tara Law | February 8, 2021 | Time
That authorities are “doing our best” to decontaminate the area, shut down the plant, and return lives to normal.
Fukushima Nuclear Cleanup Bogged Down in Bureaucracy, Could Take Decades | Lennox Samuels | March 11, 2013 | THE DAILY BEASTFor the next three months, workers labored around the clock to decontaminate the site of deadly plutonium.
Tony Blair managed to decontaminate the losing Labour brand in 1994 by rechristening his party “ New Labour.”
He needed to, in his phrase, “decontaminate the Conservative Party brand.”
He says that it really was essential to decontaminate the Tory brand.
They want our planets, and they didn't want to have to decontaminate them when they took them over.
Shock Absorber | E.G. von WaldNobody's had time to decontaminate this whole planet like they did Earth.
Shock Absorber | E.G. von WaldA few essential manufactures had also been revived, mostly in the form of machine shops to decontaminate engine parts.
The Year When Stardust Fell | Raymond F. Jones
British Dictionary definitions for decontaminate
/ (ˌdiːkənˈtæmɪˌneɪt) /
(tr) to render (an area, building, object, etc) harmless by the removal, distribution, or neutralization of poisons, radioactivity, etc
Derived forms of decontaminate
- decontaminant, noun
- decontamination, noun
- decontaminative, adjective
- decontaminator, noun
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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