stagnate
Americanverb (used without object)
-
stagnates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
stagnated,
past participle, past
-
stagnating
present participle
-
to cease to run or flow, as water, air, etc.
-
to be or become stale or foul from standing, as a pool of water.
-
to stop developing, growing, progressing, or advancing.
My mind is stagnating from too much TV.
-
to be or become sluggish and dull.
When the leading lady left, the show started to stagnate.
verb (used with object)
-
stagnates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
stagnated,
past participle, past
-
stagnating
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
stagnatesimple
-
stagnatessimple
-
have stagnatedperfect
-
has stagnatedperfect
-
am stagnatingprogressive
-
are stagnatingprogressive
-
is stagnatingprogressive
-
have been stagnatingperfect progressive
-
has been stagnatingperfect progressive
Past
-
stagnatedsimple
-
had stagnatedperfect
-
was stagnatingprogressive
-
were stagnatingprogressive
-
had been stagnatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of stagnate
1660–70; < Latin stāgnātus (past participle of stāgnāre ), equivalent to stāgn ( um ) pool of standing water + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
If after high school you choose to live in your parents' house, keep the same job, and spend time with the same friends, your mother might worry that you've decided to stagnate, or stop moving forward. When water stagnates, it stops moving and then sometimes begins to smell bad and attract mosquitoes. Think of a marshy pond or an old puddle. Similarly in the figurative sense, when the economy or society stagnates, it doesn't just sit still, it loses momentum. The word carries with it a negative connotation as something that stagnates really should be moving.
Vocabulary lists containing stagnate
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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's already starting to stagnate, so that's serious," said Catriona Bass, director of the Long Mead Foundation.
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2026
Whether he takes a wrecking ball to it or lets it stagnate, the Kennedy Center threatens to become his latest victim.
From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026
The housing market itself is one, as sales of existing homes, a key driver of improvement spending, stagnate.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026
“That means once investors make an allocation it is reasonable to see that it will stagnate for a while causing volatility with lower volumes of shares traded,” he said in emailed comments.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 13, 2026
Their assignment was to stagnate and live in the past.
From "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris
One challenge for China is the huge amount of debt carried by loss-making companies, much of which can’t easily be repaid as overall growth stagnates.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 12, 2026
Today, they’re deeply frustrated with the results as the gaming industry stagnates and consumers face higher prices on everything from memory to storage drives and graphics cards.
From MarketWatch ● May 23, 2026
The opposite can occur if the economy stagnates or shrinks.
From BBC ● May 18, 2026
Last year's emissions cuts were driven by falls in energy-intensive industries, many of which are struggling as the economy stagnates, and record solar power generation.
From Barron's ● Jan. 7, 2026
A whole rich county now stagnates hopelessly under the grip of this sample of private enterprise, towns fail to grow, trade flows sluggishly from point to point.
From New Worlds For Old A Plain Account of Modern Socialism by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
While inflation rates have been increasing this year, the rates on many high-yield savings accounts have largely stagnated.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 14, 2026
Heavy responsibility will lie with loan signing Alejandro Garnacho, whose career has stagnated, while hopes are high for Brazil midfielder Joao Gomes, who was signed from Wolves for £38m.
From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2026
The city’s vouchers for the Community Cat Program have stagnated compared with vouchers for individuals with pets, Naitaki said, leading to explosive kitten seasons like this year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 11, 2026
One of them: to shore up consumption, which has stagnated in recent years, by opening up retail across the whole week.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 19, 2026
Back in Detroit, the labor war had stagnated, with each side accusing the other of failing to communicate.
From "Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albom
The market for asset-backed commercial paper teetered on the brink of collapse during the financial crisis before stagnating for a decade.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
"I think we're stagnating too much and we need to develop the economy," Aia Laucina, a 49-year-old employee of the European Commission, told AFP, adding the country needs "to work on demography".
From Barron's ● Oct. 3, 2026
“They’re now moving from being a very quickly growing market to a stagnating and slower-growth market when it comes to transportation fuels,” mostly because of China’s massive push toward electric vehicles.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 1, 2026
"It's really stagnating our populations here, because we need to be able to move animals to create healthy breeding pools to look after the genetics of our populations," Biddle said.
From BBC ● Aug. 13, 2026
“I just feel like I’m stagnating, and it’s pretty obvious Sam isn’t interested in my development.”
From "Proud" by Ibtihaj Muhammad
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
