fractionate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to separate or divide into component parts, fragments, divisions, etc.
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to separate (a mixture) into ingredients or into portions having different properties, as by distillation or crystallization; cause to undergo fractional distillation, crystallization, or the like.
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to obtain by such a process.
verb
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to separate or cause to separate into constituents or into fractions containing concentrated constituents
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(tr) chem to obtain (a constituent of a mixture) by a fractional process
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of fractionate
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:
"And if there's less precipitation, the isotopes are going to fractionate differently than normal," he said.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 15, 2023
"Then we would carry them up to the 15th floor where we would fractionate and purify them."
From Reuters ● May 5, 2010
Under its most recent chairman, Alabama's easygoing John Sparkman, the committee "had begun to fractionate," says Church, in typically grand language.
From Time Magazine Archive
During reactions in nature, for example the expulsion from volcanism, deposition from the atmosphere, and the uptake by organisms, Hg-isotopes can become fractionated, enriching one pool in heavier isotopes, and others in lighter isotopes.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 30, 2024
In this relational void, where the story often feels fractionated rather than woven, the wildfire itself emerges as the book's main character.
From Scientific American ● Jun. 18, 2023
The company hopes that fractionated plasma treatments will be available within a decade.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 2, 2020
As part of that deal, federal officials agreed to spend $1.6 billion to purchase so-called fractionated parcels of land that have multiple owners, which makes them hard to sell or develop.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 1, 2016
For this purpose the crude distillate is redistilled over sulphuric acid and then fractionated.
From The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia Volume 1 of 28 by Project Gutenberg
The crude oil is heated to high temperatures at the base of a tall fractionating column, vaporizing many of the components that rise within the column.
From Textbooks ● Feb. 14, 2019
It was only decades later that scientists discovered why fractionating doses definitely improves radiation therapy outcomes, and homeopathy had nothing to do with it.
From Slate ● May 4, 2016
Fisher believes instead in "fractionating:" breaking the problem down into individual steps, then deciding at each stage what is wanted from the adversary and determining what he can reasonably be expected to give.
From Time Magazine Archive
But in 1926 University of Chicago Chemist Fred Koch and his assistant Lemuel McGee began dissolving, fractionating and distilling tons of bulls' testicles in an attempt to discover what it is that makes bulls bulls.
From Time Magazine Archive
The liquid there heated and changed state, rising as vapor through the fractionating column to catch in the condenser and trickle in droplets into the collection flask.
From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor
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.
