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:
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
But the winds also desiccate vegetation and create dangerous wildfire conditions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 11, 2021
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
They desiccate when temperatures plummet, sidestepping the potential hazard of ice forming in their tissues.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 5, 2019
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
Let a good, thorough-paced proser get hold of one of these stories, and he carefully desiccates them of whatever fancy may be left, till he has reduced them to the proper dryness of fact.
From Among My Books First Series by Lowell, James Russell
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
Plus: Does anyone really like nibbling desiccated gumdrops?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 5, 2025
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
There were some old rusted tools lying about and some desiccated straw lined the far left corner, but half the roof was either missing or about to fall off.
From "Summer of the Mariposas" by Guadalupe García McCall
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
The decline of the Salton Sea, however, does not mean Southern California will forever be protected against a San Andreas earthquake as long as that area is desiccating.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2023
Hotter conditions have also caused more moisture to evaporate from the landscape, desiccating croplands and causing millions of livestock to starve.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 27, 2023
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.
