interact
Americanverb (used without object)
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interacts,
present (3rd person singular)
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interacted,
past participle, past
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interacting
present participle
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to act one upon another.
A person's microbiome and immune system may interact in ways that promote inflammation.
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to communicate, work, or participate in an activity with someone or something: a user interacting with a computer program.
a boss who seldom interacts with employees;
a user interacting with a computer program.
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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interactsimple
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interactssimple
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have interactedperfect
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has interactedperfect
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am interactingprogressive
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are interactingprogressive
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is interactingprogressive
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have been interactingperfect progressive
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has been interactingperfect progressive
Past
-
interactedsimple
-
had interactedperfect
-
was interactingprogressive
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were interactingprogressive
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had been interactingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of interact
Explanation
Talking, dancing, playing a game — all of these activities allow you to interact with other people. To interact means to communicate and react to the people you're involved with. Some video games are called interactive because they are not static, like board games, but allow players to interact with them and direct the story. If you are talking about chemicals or medicines that interact, the presence of one affects the way the other works. If someone says that you interact well with children, it means you communicate well with them and they respond to you.
Vocabulary lists containing interact
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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Ecology - Introductory
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Ecology - Middle School
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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:
“And those changes now interact with intensifying geopolitical rivalry.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
“I think we have many very good reasons to heavily regulate how generative AI tools are allowed to interact with our children.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 14, 2026
Phonons also interact readily with both solid-state spins and electromagnetic fields.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 12, 2026
Anyone wearing smart glasses can take photos, film videos, listen to music, make phone calls, translate text or interact with an AI assistant, with sales now hitting the millions.
From Barron's ● Sep. 12, 2026
“This wight was discovered working in an American department store at Christmas. He was able to interact with a great many children in a remarkably short time—touching them, interrogating them—screening for signs of peculiarity.”
From "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" by Ransom Riggs
After one electron interacts with the trapped ion, another electron can pass through and become entangled with the quantum computer as well.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 13, 2026
The production is being promoted as “challenging the status quo of how commercial theater interacts with nonprofit institutions,” a worthy goal, if a possibly quixotic one.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
PGE2 itself can also have beneficial effects when it interacts with receptors other than EP2.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 3, 2026
He said: "I think an emerging unity candidate should have on his or her agenda reform of Fifa, and perhaps even reform of the president's role and how it interacts with those things."
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
After the memory interacts with the system to be remembered, it will definitely be in one state or the other, according to the state of the system.
From "A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays" by Stephen Hawking
Researchers watching young children’s brain activity as they interacted with ChatGPT saw less engagement in regions associated with attention and information processing than they did in adults doing the same task.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 14, 2026
Willis explained the audition process, saying they had to do a "chemistry test" to see how they interacted as a group.
From BBC ● Sep. 10, 2026
Broadly speaking, the recommendations are based on what the machine knows about you: what you've interacted with or posted about online, or information such as your age, job, location and marital status.
From Barron's ● Sep. 9, 2026
One part of the atomic wave interacted with the magnetic field, allowing the researchers to create an upward force that precisely balanced the downward pull of gravity.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 8, 2026
I’d never interacted with this side of campus in the morning, never saw these kids or spoke to them.
From "A Very Large Expanse of Sea" by Tahereh Mafi
Lineage worked with neighbors affected by the blaze, interacting with almost all of the hundreds of directly impacted households, he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2026
“Detectives are sharing photos of Garcia in hopes that someone may recognize him or remember seeing or interacting with him.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2026
In the 2026 update, published Monday, it said AI is increasingly capable of performing tasks on behalf of humans, interacting with the physical world and engaging in deception.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026
According to the findings, bulk NbSe2 may contain three interacting superconducting orders, suggesting that superconductivity in these materials is richer than previously recognized.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 31, 2026
So classical atomism, as revised and reconstructed in the seventeenth century by Gassendi, Descartes and others, explained nature in terms of interacting particles.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
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.
