correlate
Americanverb (used with object)
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correlates,
present (3rd person singular)
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correlated,
past participle, past
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correlating
present participle
verb (used without object)
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correlates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
correlated,
past participle, past
-
correlating
present participle
adjective
noun
verb
-
to place or be placed in a mutual, complementary, or reciprocal relationship
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(tr) to establish or show a correlation
adjective
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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intercorrelateverb (used with object)
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correlatableadjective
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noncorrelatingadjective
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uncorrelatedadjective
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uncorrelatedlyadverb
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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correlatesimple
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correlatessimple
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have correlatedperfect
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has correlatedperfect
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am correlatingprogressive
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are correlatingprogressive
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is correlatingprogressive
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have been correlatingperfect progressive
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has been correlatingperfect progressive
Past
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correlatedsimple
-
had correlatedperfect
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was correlatingprogressive
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were correlatingprogressive
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had been correlatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of correlate
First recorded in 1635–45; probably back formation from correlation and correlative
Explanation
If you notice that crumbs appear on your little brother's shirt whenever the cookies disappear from the cookie jar, you can say that you've correlated two facts, meaning that you've established or revealed that they're linked in a way that explains both of them. Detectives correlate pieces of evidence in order to solve crimes. For example, they might correlate a suspect’s bandaged hand with a shattered third-floor window. Correlate can also be used as a noun. Some companies promote products by suggesting that their products increase “happiness correlates,” or factors that have been shown to have a relationship with happiness, like health and friendship.
Vocabulary lists containing correlate
Essential Academic Vocabulary for High School Students, List 1
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Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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ACT Vocabulary List
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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 could correlate that way, but there’s no overarching purposeful use of it.”
From Salon ● Aug. 25, 2026
Playing more matches does not always correlate with a lower league finish.
From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2026
Credit scores don’t always correlate with incomes, but a larger income can help borrowers stay current on their bills and build their credit score.
From MarketWatch ● May 4, 2026
The vertical integration of the lighting, the merch, how those imagistic components correlate to the music.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 30, 2026
Race will correlate with nothing; it will mean nothing; we won’t even notice it anymore.
From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander
"We are interested in testing whether the butyrate-Sat1-N1-acetylspermidine pathway is altered in human IECs and whether it correlates with immune regulation or disease activity."
From Science Daily ● Aug. 21, 2026
Further research also is needed on a bigger sample size to see how the study correlates to a broad population.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 27, 2026
Meanwhile, the slight dip in unemployment correlates with a decline in labor-force participation.
From Slate ● Apr. 3, 2026
If time is money, and money is power, then who these characters spend their time with directly correlates to how wealthy and financially secure they can become.
From Salon ● Mar. 1, 2026
In fact, any health practice, such as milk drinking, which correlates positively with longevity will probably do the same with cancer incidence.
From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos
“Historically, lofty long-term growth expectations have been a bearish setup, negatively correlated with future equity returns,” agrees Savita Subramanian, the head of U.S.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 19, 2026
Even before ChatGPT heralded the beginning of the AI boom, Chinese policy documents were "talking about the idea that computing power is correlated with national power", said Stokols.
From Barron's ● Aug. 19, 2026
That connection could make the signals especially useful for investigating strongly correlated systems, where the behavior of the material emerges from interactions among many particles rather than from individual particles acting on their own.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 12, 2026
That will in turn weigh on user growth which is correlated with its services business, the analysts say.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026
Scientists use something called a correlation to measure how closely one factor predicts another, and overall, the students’ ratings correlated with the experts’ ratings by .55, which is quite a high correlation.
From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
That metric’s rise was a strong signal to buy TJX in the prepandemic era, correlating with its rise to dominance in off-price.
From Barron's ● Jun. 25, 2026
I reached similar results when correlating the total market value of each year’s IPOs and the stock market’s subsequent 10-year return, as you can see in the chart above.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 22, 2026
Mr. Stob, a professor of communication studies at Vanderbilt University, points out that “the idea of correlating outward appearance with interior mental abilities had been around for millennia.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 29, 2026
“There’s no pathogenic bacteria correlating us to anybody,” said McAfee.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 2, 2026
Professor Münsterberg proposed a congress having the definite task of bringing out the unity of knowledge with a view of correlating the scattered theoretical and practical scientific work of our day.
From International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume I Philosophy and Metaphysics by Various
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.
