desiccate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to dry thoroughly; dry up.
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to preserve (food) by removing moisture; dehydrate.
verb (used without object)
verb
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(tr) to remove most of the water from (a substance or material); dehydrate
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(tr) to preserve (food) by removing moisture; dry
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(intr) to become dried up
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To remove the moisture from something or dry it thoroughly.
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◆ A desiccator is a container that removes moisture from the air within it.
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◆ A desiccator contains a desiccant, a substance that traps or absorbs water molecules. Some desiccants include silica gel (silicon dioxide), calcium sulfate (dehydrated gypsum), calcium oxide (calcined lime), synthetic molecular sieves (porous crystalline aluminosilicates), and dried clay.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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desiccatesimple
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desiccatessimple
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have desiccatedperfect
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has desiccatedperfect
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am desiccatingprogressive
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are desiccatingprogressive
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is desiccatingprogressive
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have been desiccatingperfect progressive
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has been desiccatingperfect progressive
Past
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desiccatedsimple
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had desiccatedperfect
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was desiccatingprogressive
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were desiccatingprogressive
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had been desiccatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of desiccate
1565–75; < Latin dēsiccātus dried up, past participle of dēsiccāre, equivalent to dē- de- + siccāre, derivative of siccus dry; see -ate 1
Explanation
The verb desiccate means to dry out, dry up and dehydrate. It's helpful to desiccate weeds but certainly not crops. As anyone who's been stuck in the desert will tell you, being desiccated by the burning sun isn't much fun. Stemming from the Latin word desiccare, which means to "dry up," desiccate also means to preserve something by drying it out. Without desiccation, raisins or beef jerky would not be possible!
Vocabulary lists containing desiccate
Commonly Misspelled Words, List 3
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This Week In Words: March 21–27, 2020
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I, Robot
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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:
Klosterman wondered if the recent heatwave would desiccate them.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 26, 2026
There's "a critical point", though, when the tree can't replenish the water lost through pores in the leaves and will "literally desiccate" or dry up.
From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2022
Museum curators tasked with preserving plastic artifacts know all too well that plastics discolor, desiccate, fissure and fracture, undergoing a range of physical changes, including becoming micro- and even nano-scaled particles.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 14, 2022
In my classrooms, half-finished clay projects littered the countertops, while palettes loaded with acrylic paint and incomplete canvases were left to desiccate and gather dust on the shelves.
From Salon ● May 18, 2020
Now she seemed to desiccate by the moment.
From "The Girl Who Drank the Moon" by Kelly Barnhill
The sequence of a wet season that allows grasses to grow, followed by a dry spell that desiccates them, results in a particularly high fuel load for fires, Brewington said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 11, 2023
But if you make the walls too thin, your jack-o’-lantern’s fangs will become inward-curving skin tabs as the pulp desiccates and deforms.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 19, 2022
What remains on the landscape is a body of skin and bones that then slowly desiccates and deflates, eventually preserved for the eons.
From New York Times ● Oct. 12, 2022
Like a giant hair dryer, the wind desiccates everything in its path.
From Slate ● Nov. 20, 2018
The rapid evaporation quickly dispels the vapors and the dry heat desiccates the disease creating germs and makes them innocuous.
From Arizona Sketches by Munk, J. A. (Joseph Amasa)
Kato, it turns out, had been dead for at least 30 years, his desiccated remains locked in an upstairs room while his family continued to collect his pension.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026
We drove past more empty lots, more abandoned groves, desiccated trees, signs announcing public hearings for land-use changes.
From Slate ● Apr. 20, 2026
"Everything is there. I was stuck here," he told AFP in Karachi, near the well-known Bengali market where he peddles desiccated fish and prawns to make ends meet for $7 to $9 per day.
From Barron's ● Feb. 23, 2026
Prof Rein's research finds that, after ten consecutive days of very dry weather, vegetation becomes so desiccated across wide areas that the likelihood of multiple fires igniting simultaneously rises sharply.
From BBC ● Aug. 13, 2025
In the wake of the reapers’ scythes the black land showed again through the stubble, no longer moist and rich but bone-hard, desiccated, and beginning to crack in all directions under the burning sun.
From "The Golden Goblet" by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
He says they were "like plastic...you could almost knock them...they were black, desiccating, clenched".
From BBC ● May 21, 2024
Thank you, Bill Burr, for sparing me from suffering through more than 90 minutes of Bill Maher’s desiccating “Club Random” podcast.
From Salon ● May 16, 2024
But in the dry volcanic valley, punished by sun and desiccating wind, the newcomers built virtually no homes.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 3, 2022
Each passing dry storm system is followed by desiccating winds lasting two or three days.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2022
Composed of heat-resistant plastic and chemically treated cork layers, and equipped with a desiccating unit to keep the air bone-dry, the insosuits could withstand the full glare of Mercury’s sun for twenty minutes.
From "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov
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.
