interact
Americanverb (used without object)
-
interacts,
present (3rd person singular)
-
interacted,
past participle, past
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interacting
present participle
-
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
-
has interactedperfect
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am interactingprogressive
-
are interactingprogressive
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is interactingprogressive
-
have been interactingperfect progressive
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has been interactingperfect progressive
Past
-
interactedsimple
-
had interactedperfect
-
was interactingprogressive
-
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:
Sky News did not interact with Mr Farage's daughter.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
He maintains that ServiceNow is fundamentally different because it is a platform company, acting as a control tower astride legacy systems, enabling AI models to interact securely across enterprise workflows.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
Robotics companies have been ploughing resources into the development of physical AI -- technology that allows robots to move and interact with the world autonomously.
From Barron's ● Aug. 19, 2026
“All the opportunities to interact and show our love and support to the artist, it brings everyone together,” Salazar said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 17, 2026
But you could still interact with the environment in a limited way—walking through doors, sitting in chairs, and so forth.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
The Rumbler interacts with a standard police siren, which generates around 110 to 120 decibels, and amplifies that sound through its speakers in eight-second intervals.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026
It's been suggested that it will call for a radical overhaul of the way every part of the public sector – from education to health and the welfare system – interacts with the private sector.
From BBC ● Jun. 23, 2026
The aim is to build an atlas of how diet interacts with the body, and to pinpoint which molecules really matter for health.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 17, 2026
To address those problems, it separated the model, or reasoning layer, from the action layer that interacts with tools, and that required managing which tools the model was authorized to use.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 2026
The next category is the electromagnetic force, which interacts with electrically charged particles like electrons and quarks, but not with uncharged particles such as gravitons.
From "A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays" by Stephen Hawking
Carolyn Kennett, from Penzance, Cornwall, is an astro-archaeologist - studying how ancient cultures interacted with the sky.
From BBC ● Aug. 11, 2026
While scouting locations in New Mexico, the production interacted with local Latino families.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 7, 2026
In the initial aftermath of the stroke, Walter struggled for months to speak clearly, according to people who interacted with him.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
Computer models allowed them to explore how different variables interacted and to predict changes that would be difficult to measure directly in every experiment.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 29, 2026
Mr. Samupindi spoke at assemblies and handed out awards, but otherwise rarely interacted with students.
From "I Will Always Write Back" by Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda
Teng mostly avoids on-camera interviews with her subjects, preferring to watch them interacting with patients or in the operating room.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2026
"Humans are a very social species, so interacting via social media offered opportunities to alleviate boredom and join communities and develop friendships."
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
If we were to make a precise measurement of whether the photon is dwelling in the atoms, at each instant of time, we would prevent the atoms from interacting with the photon.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 4, 2026
Outside in the streets, the cosplayers enjoyed mugging for the cameras or taking selfies and laughing at themselves and others while interacting with their favorite celebrities.
From Salon ● Jul. 31, 2026
“I am not interacting with the surroundings as directly as you are,” Marco continues.
From "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern
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.
