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
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fulminatessimple
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have fulminatedperfect
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has fulminatedperfect
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am fulminatingprogressive
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are fulminatingprogressive
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is fulminatingprogressive
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have been fulminatingperfect progressive
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has been fulminatingperfect progressive
Past
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fulminatedsimple
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had fulminatedperfect
-
was fulminatingprogressive
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were fulminatingprogressive
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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
It was at the point that its dance critic, Arlene Croce, who was then among Bob’s most valued friends, began to fulminate in print against what she saw as Martins’s inadequacies as Balanchine’s successor.
From New York Times ● Jun. 23, 2023
You said it better with the Santa example, but I get redundant when I fulminate.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 17, 2022
They fulminate in caustic tirades at the condemned, whose sentence is never in doubt and whose guilt is never in question.
From Salon ● Oct. 13, 2021
The first trials of the new fulminate were made in the presence of Yakub, and were most successful; the invention proved of the greatest use to the Khalifa.
From Ten Years' Captivity in the Mahdi's Camp 1882-1892 by F. R. Wingate
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
One of the shanty men might have dropped a box of fulminates.
From Peter: a novel of which he is not the hero by Francis Hopkinson Smith
“It takes people who are wealthy in New York to maintain the museums, maintain the hospitals,” John Catsimatidis, a billionaire real estate and supermarket tycoon, fulminated on Fox News.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2025
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
Where once the tabloid press fulminated against the prize’s nominees, these days much art world discussion takes place in more specialized publications and on social media.
From New York Times ● Nov. 25, 2021
Kim Jong-il was exasperated by his compatriots’ lack of drive and creativity, and bizarrely fulminated against excessive ideology and dogma in North Korean films, secret recordings aired in a new documentary reveal.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 3, 2016
The mysterious manner, the serious, agitated tone of his voice, the look of triumph which fulminated from his eyes as he spoke, surprised Gonzalo not a little.
From The Fourth Estate, vol.1 by Armando Palacio Vald?s
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
In the process, Serse forsakes his betrothed, Amastre, who spends much of the opera fulminating while dressed as a man.
From New York Times ● May 9, 2022
First Lady Edith Wilson practically ran the White House, leaving opponents fulminating about "government by petticoat".
From BBC ● Apr. 15, 2019
To make the mercurial fulminating powder.—Dissolve half an ounce of mercury in three ounces of nitric acid, assisting the solution by a gentle heat.
From A Select Collection of Valuable and Curious Arts and Interesting Experiments, Which are Well Explained and Warranted Genuine and may be Performed Easily, Safely, and at Little Expense. by Various Unknown
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.
