constellate
Americanverb (used with or without object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of constellate
1615–25; < Late Latin constellātus star-studded, equivalent to Latin con- con- + stell ( a ) star + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
To constellate is to gather or cluster together. You might notice that the guests at your party tend to constellate around the snacks. Constellate is a lovely, literary way to describe anything or anyone forming a cluster. This verb comes from the noun constellation and its Latin roots con-, "together," and stella, "star." Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, and five other bright stars constellate in Orion, the constellation also known as the Hunter. And if you bring your adorable puppy to school, all the dog lovers are definitely going to constellate around you!
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 felt like if I was going to watch my mother constellate, it would be like I was missing one of the stars.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 23, 2022
Mr. Amiri doesn’t give many interviews, and he hasn’t yet been made a cult obsession by most hypebeasts, the street-wear devotees that constellate the men’s wear-discussing corners of the internet.
From New York Times ● Jan. 18, 2018
But she had no sense of the true history in which she was now embedded, or the strength of the forces she would constellate.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 26, 2017
The choice to constellate certain kinds of rituals, stories, propositions and epistemological modes into a single package called “religion” is a fairly recent, European, and Protestant phenomenon.
From Salon ● Dec. 13, 2015
The tormentilla gleams in showers along the mountain turf; her delicate crosslets are separate, though constellate, as the rubied daisy.
From Proserpina, Volume 1 Studies Of Wayside Flowers by Ruskin, John
One of my sisters walked through the front door, sand from the beach constellated across her tanned back sprinkling across the floor with each step, as our two Great Pyrenees rose to meet her.
From Salon ● Jul. 23, 2023
That aside, one can only salute and marvel at the staggering fecundity of idea and insight that turns almost every remaining paragraph into a hive of constellated meaning.
From New York Times ● Oct. 21, 2021
The events of the afternoon have been disassembled and constellated in his memory: a turkey sandwich, his sister’s Taurus, a small brass key from under a mat, a tiled kitchen floor, two snarling dogs.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 2, 2014
For a writer, who may have fought every social compulsion to "grow up", whose inner world has been constellated around avoiding that surrender, this is an interesting predicament.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 18, 2013
I look out the window to see lights—dozens of them in the predawn darkness, constellated like stars.
From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
Mixing, collaging, generating new things by constellating old things — it’s all part of the creative churn.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2023
By this I mean that I’m interested in looking at her as somebody doing this complex constellating of the slave past with our racial-capitalist present.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 25, 2022
Yet it doesn’t seem much to ask—a world where a woman can live without jumping at shadows, without the crawling apprehension of something nasty constellating over her shoulder.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 13, 2016
His long beard floated like a white cloud upon the star-like clusters of jewels constellating the orphrey robe fitting tightly over his breast.
From Against the Grain by Huysmans, J.-K. (Joris-Karl)
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.
