fibrillate
Americanverb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of fibrillate
First recorded in 1830–40; fibrill(a) + -ate 1
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’s for when you fibrillate too much,” I reply.
From Salon ● May 21, 2016
But if something mental or physical excites the accelerator nerve or stimulates the adrenals to pour an excess of adrenalin into the blood, the ventricles begin to fibrillate.
From Time Magazine Archive
On the operating table, Able's heart began to fibrillate.
From Time Magazine Archive
But hearts across the nation and around the world began to fibrillate at the thought that Quayle might suddenly be thrust into the most powerful position on earth.
From Time Magazine Archive
Bush again came face to face with the prospect of dying five weeks ago after his heart began to fibrillate as he was jogging at Camp David.
From Time Magazine Archive
Instead, Velev and his collaborators took a different approach, reinforcing the agarose films with fibrillated colloidal scale material -- called soft dendritic colloids -- made from chitosan.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 11, 2023
Selling almost 10 million copies and knocking Michael Jackson's Dangerous from the top of the charts, the album fibrillated the psyche of a generation.
From Time Magazine Archive
When moving slowly they look much like nicely-pointed paint brushes, but when the animal is compressed they quickly become fibrillated, and then look like extremely old and worn brushes.
From Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 by Calkins, Gary N. (Gary Nathan)
The primary change involves the articular cartilage, which becomes softened and fibrillated and is worn away until the subjacent bone is exposed.
From Manual of Surgery Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. by Thomson, Alexis
The presence of this substance is readily detected by the addition of acetic acid to mucus, the effect being a fibrillated appearance of the latter, the fibres presenting a more or less parallel distribution.
From A System of Practical Medicine by American Authors, Vol. I Volume 1: Pathology and General Diseases by Various
This drug can create a deep state of anesthesia and amnesia sufficient to block the pain of a surgeon’s knife or 400 joules of electricity delivered to reset a fibrillating heart.
From Slate ● Aug. 20, 2024
His heart was beating in the 140s, its upper chambers fibrillating.
From New York Times ● Feb. 8, 2021
It was not beating, but it was fibrillating.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 30, 2019
The coroner said his heart, fibrillating, stopped pumping blood to his organs, starving his brain of oxygen.
From Reuters ● Sep. 21, 2017
Kyril Montana was panting; his heart beat rapidly, almost fibrillating, and he felt queasy, slightly nauseous.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
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.
