fulminate
Americanverb (used without object)
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fulminates,
present (3rd person singular)
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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
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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
Mercury fulminate is more often employed in the detonator, and is prepared from mercury, alcohol, and nitric acid.
From The New Gresham Encyclopedia Volume 4, Part 3: Estremoz to Felspar by Various
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
It is one of the many anomalies of the life of the Russian Dictator that he himself belongs by birth, training, culture, and experience to the bourgeoisie against which he fulminates so furiously.
From Bolshevism The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy by John Spargo
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
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
He fulminated about it in his floor speeches, often delivered on Friday afternoons when most of his colleagues had long since flown home for the weekend.
From New York Times ● Jun. 30, 2020
Even as the House voted and Trump fulminated, small-town life here went on: Folks finished up work chores, dashed to the post office to send Christmas cards and donned gaudy holiday sweaters.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 19, 2019
The interdict, which Pope Adrian thus fulminated against Rome, lasted from Palm Sunday till Maunday Thursday.
From Pope Adrian IV An Historical Sketch by Richard Raby
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
The unintended effect, however, is of cramped twin biographies, when what we’re here for is a drawn-out colloquy in a tight space: Lewis’ gentle prodding of a rationalist’s edges versus Freud’s fulminating about God’s existence.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 22, 2023
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
His glimmering dark fantasy world began fulminating in Mexico, where he was born, and continued in San Diego, where his family moved when he was 9.
From New York Times ● Dec. 4, 2018
This electric action is analogous to that which is obtained by means of the fulminating plate, which is made of glass with metallic plates.
From Curiosities of Medical Experience by J. G. (John Gideon) Millingen
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.
