fulminate
Americanverb (used without object)
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fulminates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
fulminated,
past participle, past
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fulminating
present participle
-
to explode with a loud noise; detonate.
-
to issue denunciations or the like (usually followed byagainst ).
The minister fulminated against legalized vice.
verb (used with object)
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fulminates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
fulminated,
past participle, past
-
fulminating
present participle
-
to cause to explode.
-
to issue or pronounce with vehement denunciation, condemnation, or the like.
noun
verb
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to make criticisms or denunciations; rail
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to explode with noise and violence
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archaic (intr) to thunder and lighten
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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fulminationnoun
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fulminatornoun
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fulminatoryadjective
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nonfulminatingadjective
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unfulminatedadjective
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unfulminatingadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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fulminatesimple
-
fulminatessimple
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have fulminatedperfect
-
has fulminatedperfect
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am fulminatingprogressive
-
are fulminatingprogressive
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is fulminatingprogressive
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have been fulminatingperfect progressive
-
has been fulminatingperfect progressive
Past
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fulminatedsimple
-
had fulminatedperfect
-
was fulminatingprogressive
-
were fulminatingprogressive
-
had been fulminatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of fulminate
First recorded in 1375–1425; late Middle English fulminaten < Latin fulminātus, past participle of fulmināre “to hurl thunderbolts, thunder,” equivalent to fulmin-, stem of fulmen “thunderbolt, lightning” + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
Watch a bomb fulminate or explode and hope you're under safe cover. Have your parents fulminate or blow up at you for coming home past curfew and hope you're not grounded for too long. The word fulminate is made up of the Latin root fulmen meaning "lightning flash." Look up at the sky during a violent thunderstorm and chances are you'll catch thunder and lightning fulminate or explode loudly and violently overhead. But you needn't look to the sky alone for this kind of intensity. If you find yourself in a room with passionate Republicans and Democrats debating, you might see them fulminate or severely rail against each other's beliefs.
Vocabulary lists containing fulminate
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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:
Mr. Lanthimos isn’t the type to thunder and fulminate and declare his themes, and the film doesn’t really align with any particular political outlook.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2025
He can fulminate for all eight days into the giant void that once held your interest in what he has to say.
From Washington Post ● May 2, 2023
“Amy would fulminate and care deeply about issues,” said one former mayoral aide.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 7, 2021
Except for an unseemly moment in which Wolfe is permitted to fulminate against unspecified critics who accused him of botching the American response to Ebola, virology now disappears.
From New York Times ● Jan. 28, 2021
And thus I mused with me, When he had ceased to fulminate at state, "Another Count von Hackelnburg the fiend Hath tricked unto the chase!—for hounds from Hell?"
From Accolon of Gaul with Other Poems by Madison Julius Cawein
Mr. Vance fulminates: “Never have I read a purer distillation of our worship at the altar of commerce.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 2026
“They are coming, they are coming, they are coming!” he fulminates in a clip the parents’ legal team plays for him during his 2019 deposition, at which he seems unmoved.
From Salon ● Mar. 26, 2024
“But even if money spent now saves money later, so what?” he fulminates.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2021
He fulminates fire, of course, if he has remembered to change his flint, and, all in all, it’s just as well that he is invisible most of the time.
From Time ● Aug. 11, 2016
The sentences, which Victor fulminates, will all turn to smoke, for the world has little scruple in ridiculing the Anti-Pope.
From Barbarossa; An Historical Novel of the XII Century. by Conrad von Bolanden
Ferguson stared deep into the night while, behind him, his coaching staff of Neil McCann, Allan McGregor and Billy Dodds fulminated.
From BBC ● Feb. 26, 2025
Its first publisher, Harrison Gray Otis, fulminated against the typesetters’ union trying to organize Times workers.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 23, 2023
They fulminated against the notion that affidavits could be submitted after the close of an extradition hearing; it was repugnant to “universally accepted principles of law” for Root even to consider this new evidence.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 13, 2022
As Mr. Rove fulminated, an anchor, Megyn Kelly, walked off the set, cameras in tow, down a long corridor to Mr. Mishkin’s operation, and demanded to know if he was confident in his call.
From New York Times ● Sep. 27, 2020
The voice of God has not yet, through that of his Vicar, fulminated the terrible sentence.
From Pius IX. And His Time by Æneas MacDonell Dawson
It is an unusually nuanced take on a subject that too often generates reflexive fulminating or fawning, and a truly auspicious start to the New Museum’s new chapter.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 20, 2026
Much of the time is spent ruminating, fulminating and kvetching, kind of like life, which makes it a radical departure.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 17, 2022
Marsan and Kinnear are the two poles of the production, with Kinnear bringing his trademarked thoughtful chill to the fascist frontman and Marsan fulminating entertainingly as the head of the resistance.
From New York Times ● Apr. 29, 2022
With a well-developed culture already in the bottle, they "would have been attacked by a tetanus of the fulminating variety".
From BBC ● Dec. 10, 2020
He thought of Doctor Codger at Cambridge, bubbling away with his iridescent Hegelianism like a salted snail; of Doctor Quiller at Oxford, ignoring Bergson and fulminating a preposterous insular Pragmatism.
From Marriage by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
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.
