dissipate
Americanverb (used with object)
-
to scatter in various directions; disperse; dispel.
- Antonyms:
- unite
-
to spend or use wastefully or extravagantly; squander; deplete.
to dissipate one's talents; to dissipate a fortune on high living.
verb (used without object)
verb
-
to exhaust or be exhausted by dispersion
-
(tr) to scatter or break up
-
(intr) to indulge in the pursuit of pleasure
Synonym Usage
See scatter.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
dissipatesimple
-
dissipatessimple
-
have dissipatedperfect
-
has dissipatedperfect
-
am dissipatingprogressive
-
are dissipatingprogressive
-
is dissipatingprogressive
-
have been dissipatingperfect progressive
-
has been dissipatingperfect progressive
Past
-
dissipatedsimple
-
had dissipatedperfect
-
was dissipatingprogressive
-
were dissipatingprogressive
-
had been dissipatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of dissipate
First recorded in 1525–35; from Latin dissipātus (past participle of dissipāre, dissupāre “to scatter”); see -ate 1
Explanation
To dissipate is to disperse or fade away — as a bad smell will dissipate (usually) if you wait long enough. Dissipate can also mean “spend or use wastefully.” If you win the lottery, you might suddenly find yourself with a group of new friends encouraging you to dissipate your money (on them). Note that dissipate can be used with or without an object: "Once you dissipate your wealth, your new group of friends will dissipate without a trace."
Vocabulary lists containing dissipate
List 1
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Night
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The Lightning Thief
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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:
Whether Microsoft’s report will cause “bear concerns” to dissipate is still up for debate.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 22, 2026
When Morocco's energy started to dissipate, it became a contest.
From BBC ● Jun. 20, 2026
In a fast-return scenario, flows could rebound rapidly and even briefly exceed pre-war levels if security concerns fully dissipate, though this outcome is considered unlikely, Matt Wright and Panagiotis Krontiras say.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 16, 2026
"It will take time for production to ramp back up, for logistics to normalise, and for the risk premium embedded in crude prices to dissipate," he said.
From Barron's ● Jun. 16, 2026
The unstructured blobs of irregular galaxies, the arms of spiral galaxies and the torus of ring galaxies exist for only a few frames in the cosmic motion picture, then dissipate, often to be reformed again.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
VIX futures can lose dramatically if VIX is declining and their time value premium dissipates.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 23, 2026
They forecast silver dropping to about $42 an ounce by the end of next year as exuberance over gold dissipates.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 27, 2025
Boron arsenide has the potential to revolutionize electronics and semiconductor technology by providing a material that both dissipates heat effectively and performs as a high-quality semiconductor.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 12, 2025
Perhaps this is just a temporary cloud, like the coastal fog that dissipates as summer rolls on?
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 15, 2025
She lifts the mask off her face and a white puff of aerosolized medicine dissipates in front of her.
From "Clairboyance" by Kristiana Kahakauwila
Incident traffic has dissipated substantially in the past years, it noted, with 45 incidents reported in 2024, 19 in 2025, and three since the beginning of 2026.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026
If there was any bad blood between Paxton and Middleton over these clashes, it seems to have dissipated in the years since.
From Salon ● May 23, 2026
For three weeks, McFarland and Brune followed short-lived storms that dissipated quickly, leaving them without useful data.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 21, 2026
That view hasn’t fully dissipated, but it has become less certain.
From Barron's ● Apr. 8, 2026
All the smells that should have dissipated on the wind were held in, close.
From "Tiger, Tiger" by Lynne Reid Banks
Power-sector demand will start the week lower with heat in the south dissipating and Texas even trending toward cooler than normal for mid-July, he says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 13, 2026
“You can kind of feel people’s anxiety dissipating throughout the day,” Kai says, “so that by the time it’s dinner, everyone’s super comfortable with each other.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 2, 2026
While the colder climate of space holds appeal for some backers of the galactic data-center vision, “there’s no airflow,” Huang noted, which could present challenges when it comes to dissipating heat.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 25, 2026
"The gas behaves like a perfect conductor; even though countless collisions occur between the atoms, quantities like mass and energy flow freely, without dissipating into the system."
From Science Daily ● Jan. 7, 2026
He felt the tingle in his skin dissipating.
From "Boy 2.0" by Tracey Baptiste
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.
