disseminate
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Usage
What does disseminate mean? To disseminate is to distribute, spread, broadcast, or disperse widely. The act or process of disseminating is dissemination. The word is especially used in reference to the distribution of information, or things that contain information, like files and documents. It is also associated with the official release of such information by organizations, such as a company that disseminates a press release or a government agency that disseminates information to the public. Example: Our chief media officer is responsible for disseminating press releases to various outlets.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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disseminatesimple
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disseminatessimple
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have disseminatedperfect
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has disseminatedperfect
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am disseminatingprogressive
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are disseminatingprogressive
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is disseminatingprogressive
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have been disseminatingperfect progressive
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has been disseminatingperfect progressive
Past
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disseminatedsimple
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had disseminatedperfect
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was disseminatingprogressive
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were disseminatingprogressive
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had been disseminatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of disseminate
First recorded in 1595–1605; from Latin dissēminātus (past participle of dissēmināre; dis- dis- 1 + sēmināre “to sow”), equivalent to dis- + sēmin- (stem of sēmen “seed”) + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
Disseminate means to spread information, knowledge, opinions widely. Semin- derives from the Latin word for seed; the idea with disseminate is that information travels like seeds sown by a farmer. Think about a teacher distributing a hand out at the beginning of a class. The dis- of disseminate and distribute come from the same Latin prefix which means "apart, in a different direction." But unlike papers distributed in class, information, once spread around in all directions, cannot be pulled back in. Think about false rumors or political smear campaigns and you'll understand that dissemination is usually a one-way process.
Vocabulary lists containing disseminate
Hidden Figures
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Grade 11, List 5
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1984
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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:
Neither Party shall disclose, reproduce, disseminate, use, or permit any third party to disclose, reproduce, disseminate, or use any Confidential Information without the prior written consent of the Confiding Party.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 23, 2026
On Friday, Nestle refuted the accusations made by the watchdog, saying it reserved the right to respond in court "if Foodwatch continues to disseminate misleading information".
From Barron's ● Jan. 31, 2026
In its lawsuit, ExxonMobil said the law would force it “to engage in granular conjecture about unknowable future developments and to publicly disseminate that speculation on its website.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2025
And it formed a coalition with Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, PragerU and dozens of other conservative groups to disseminate patriotic programming.
From Salon ● Oct. 9, 2025
Although the Americans leave Manila in the hands of the Japanese—temporarily, at least—and the Propaganda Corps works tirelessly to disseminate their messages, the Imperial Japanese Army struggles in the first months of the occupation.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
Much of that money has been routed through a nonprofit judicial advocacy group Leo founded — now called The 85 Fund — which both receives and disseminates Leo’s funding.
From Salon ● Apr. 10, 2026
The letter said that project was aimed at assessing how the Secret Service identifies, receives, disseminates and operationalizes intelligence concerning threats to the officials it protects.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 3, 2026
“If a city in a country wants to promote its tourism, its culture, that’s a very different thing from a paid advertisement that disseminates discriminatory messages,” she said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 21, 2025
The organization referenced by Mr. Jacobs is the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, or CAFT, a group that selects targets and disseminates information and resources to anti-fur activists on the ground.
From New York Times ● Jun. 3, 2024
Happily man preserves and disseminates as well as destroys.
From Darwiniana; Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism by Gray, Asa
According to his death certificate, Busch died from hemorrhagic shock and disseminated intravascular coagulation after complications from bacterial pneumonia led to sepsis.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2026
And conservative media outlets, such as Fox News, have disseminated them to millions of viewers.
From Salon ● Jun. 4, 2026
Indonesian officials said they had issued warnings against climbing Mount Dukono which were widely disseminated through social media as well as on banners at trail entrances, but some hikers had ignored them.
From BBC ● May 8, 2026
"So we do need better content that is disseminated through these platforms," he told a press conference.
From Barron's ● Apr. 24, 2026
It’s just...a possibility, like it’s a possibility that I could turn to dust in the next instant and be disseminated throughout the universe as an omniscient consciousness.
From "It’s Kind of a Funny Story" by Ned Vizzini
They called the medical groups’ request to block the vaccine panel from meeting publicly, and the HHS from disseminating information about immunization recommendations, “an extraordinarily unusual advice-banning” proposal.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 16, 2026
“What I can say with absolute certainty is that the DOJ did a terrible job when they were disseminating these files,” Hersh said.
From Salon ● Feb. 10, 2026
An Egyptian court denied on Thursday the appeal of a prominent economist seeking to overturn his five-year prison sentence for disseminating "fake news", according to one of his lawyers.
From Barron's ● Dec. 25, 2025
Our job is to determine whether someone was engaged in journalism and whether their work involved gathering and disseminating news and information.
From Slate ● Aug. 28, 2025
Thus the category ‘discovery’ proved to be capable of disseminating across the various local cultures of Renaissance Europe, but it did not fare well elsewhere.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
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.
