calumniate
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of calumniate
1545–55; < Latin calumniātus (past participle of calumniārī to accuse falsely, trick), equivalent to calumni ( a ) calumny + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
To calumniate is to make a false accusation against someone or spread lies about how awful they are. Don’t calumniate your rival in the race for class president, because when the truth comes out, you’ll be the bad guy. The courts would say to calumniate is to slander. Everyone else would just say it’s mean. Calumniate is just a fancier way of saying “lie” — but specifically lying to tarnish someone's reputation. If your sister says you purposely broke a vase and you didn't, she calumniates you. If you get in trouble in class, you could calumniate to the principal about your teacher being a wretched mess — but the other students might speak up and prove you wrong.
Vocabulary lists containing calumniate
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"The Wife of Bath's Tale," Vocabulary from the narrative poem
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"The Wife of Bath's Tale" by Geoffrey Chaucer
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It is still fashionable to calumniate this man—and yet Channing, Theodore Parker, Longfellow, Emerson, and in fact all the liberal Unitarians and Universalists of the world have adopted the opinions of Thomas Paine.
From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 3 (of 12) Dresden Edition?Lectures by Robert Green Ingersoll
But he must not calumniate as he passes.
From From the Easy Chair, series 2 by George William Curtis
They will calumniate you as they have done Thomas Paine and the rest of those brave men who have been courageous enough to strive for civil and religious liberty.
From Theological Essays by Charles Bradlaugh
They know not what they do, nor what they say: in their ignorance they calumniate that which is best both in their life and in themselves.
From Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion based on Psychology and History by Auguste Sabatier
The tattling world would instantly unite—or calumniate us.
From The Wanderer (Volume 2 of 5) or, Female Difficulties by Fanny Burney
I’m putting this politely: They have been calumniated and abused for centuries.
From New York Times ● Dec. 11, 2020
A good remedy against calumniation or slander: If you are calumniated or slandered to your very skin, to your very flesh, to your very bones, cast it back upon the false tongues.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 1, 2014
The imperial pair saw a calumniated saint in Rasputin; the people, in the words of a monarchist member of the Duma, saw "the beastly, drunken unclean face of a bald satyr from Tobolsk."
From Time Magazine Archive
But I am not to suffer the law of the land to be calumniated by such a defence.
From The Battle of The Press As Told in the Story of the Life of Richard Carlile By His Daughter, Theophila Carlile Campbell by Theophila Carlile Campbell
But death no sooner put an end to his influence, than the memory of the once envied Italian was calumniated upon all hands.
From Life of Mary Queen of Scots, Volume I (of 2) by Henry Glassford Bell
He went out more like Nixon, his accomplishments tainted by allegations of criminality, his circle of trust constricted by banishments, betrayals and arrests until it included few besides his temperamental wife and calumniating eldest son.
From New York Times ● Jun. 13, 2021
And after calumniating the greatest masterpieces, they dare couple their obscure names with those of our supreme masters .
From Time Magazine Archive
Adams read in the newspapers that Jefferson had compiled “a Magazine of slips of newspapers, and pamphlets, vilifying, calumniating and defaming you.”
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
We do not vouch for their accusations; it is possible that they were calumniating each other.
From Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo
Lord Byron answered, depreciating himself in a literary sense, and calumniating himself morally, by the assertion that he resembled Lord Lyttelton's son—a bad, though talented man—rather than the great author.
From My Recollections of Lord Byron by Sir Hubert E. H. (Hubert Edward Henry) Jerningham
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
