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:
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
Don Was, musician and producer: In life, as exemplified by music, if you don’t change, you stagnate.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 25, 2026
As I have written elsewhere, this was the pivotal decade when American culture began to stagnate.
From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2026
Wage growth is concentrated at the top, while median wages stagnate.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 18, 2026
Without standardized materials and methods, they worried that the field of tissue culture would stagnate.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
“Decoupling seller profit from buyer satisfaction impedes economic growth and slows innovation. Buyer surplus stagnates and inflation accelerates.”
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 6, 2026
The result could be a "stagflationary shock of pretty large magnitude" - where inflation goes up and growth stagnates, Arvind Subramanian, India's former chief economic adviser, told India Today TV channel.
From BBC ● Apr. 6, 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
As growth in pizza sales stagnates, competition between restaurants has intensified.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 5, 2026
In his plays the action stagnates, because he has no interest in it.
From The Age of Tennyson by Hugh Walker
He tells me he'd tried diets in the past which worked for the first stone and then "stagnated".
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 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
The property crisis drags on and home prices have stagnated, dissuading would-be buyers.
From Barron's ● Jul. 15, 2026
While life expectancy has stagnated, in more than 90% of areas, healthy life expectancy has dropped below the state pension age, with Britons now living about a quarter of their lives in poor health.
From BBC ● Jul. 12, 2026
Berkeley’s ability to exploit its increasingly inventive faculty’s work stagnated under this lumbering regime until 1931, when Sproul met Frederick Cottrell.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
Currently, stocks of hyperscalers at the front end of the AI boom are stagnating with falls in free cash flow, while chips, infrastructure providers and optical networking gain.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 23, 2026
Instead, he linked his positions to a broader critique of stagnating wages and inequality, citing decades of flat real earnings for most US workers as a driver of populist politics on both left and right.
From BBC ● Jun. 12, 2026
Cathie Wood showcased a Tesla robo-taxi ride, highlighting its potential for earnings growth amid stagnating EV sales.
From Barron's ● Jun. 9, 2026
Some are concerned that AI could worsen what’s called a “K-shaped” economy, in which the rich see growth and most other people struggle with stagnating opportunities.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2026
He did, however, drink water, and the area reeked of urine stagnating in the toilet bowl.
From "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover
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.
