inoculate
verb (used with object)
to implant (a disease agent or antigen) in a person, animal, or plant to produce a disease for study or to stimulate disease resistance.
inoculating
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present participleof inoculate.present participle
A verb form that is used in progressive verb constructions and may also function as a modifier or a gerund.
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.
Rabbi David Baron of Temple of the Arts wishes to create a global curriculum on “altruistic behavior”—his way of inoculating the young against extremism—in honor of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 20, 2025
“It’s almost a way of inoculating himself when he is surrounding himself with loyalists who have gone through similar travails.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 8, 2024
Another collaborator, Deb Cabin, who studies prion disease at the McLaughlin Research Institute, flew out from Great Falls, Montana, to instruct them on inoculating the mice with infectious prion.
From Science Magazine ● Mar. 21, 2024
I knew, as many historians knew before me, that free and enslaved West Africans on both sides of the Atlantic were inoculating against disease before the early 18th century.
From Slate ● Sep. 4, 2023
That’s the principle of vaccination: to stimulate our antibody production without our having to go through the actual experience of the disease, by inoculating us with a dead or weakened strain of microbe.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
