nucleate
Americanadjective
verb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
adjective
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of nucleate
First recorded in 1860–65, nucleate is from the Latin word nucleātus having a kernel or stone. See nucleus, -ate 1
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:
It is thought that small carbon clusters containing Si atoms might serve as the 'pre-nuclei', which can then grow further to nucleate a diamond.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 24, 2024
So I think it’s artistic license to suggest that that could nucleate some fireworks.
From The Verge ● Dec. 17, 2021
The scientists then teased out how much of those fluctuations came from water being added to or subtracted from Earth’s surface, and calculated how that affected forces deep underground where earthquakes begin, or nucleate.
From Science Magazine ● Jun. 15, 2017
Dark energy also destabilizes the system and causes universes to nucleate out like raindrops in a cloud.
From Scientific American ● Aug. 6, 2012
In almost all nucleate cells the nucleus is resorbed when the cell reaches its full development, and it is larger and more important the younger the cell is.
From Form and Function A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology by E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
"Basically, you could have different types of order that get nucleated because of the proximity of these two frustrated lattices," he said.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 16, 2026
Dr Dirk Brandherm and his colleagues have identified more than 600 suspected houses in the Brusselstown Ring making it, to date, the largest nucleated settlement ever discovered in the entirety of prehistoric Britain and Ireland.
From BBC ● Jan. 1, 2026
Other vertebrates have red blood cells that are usually nucleated and are often relatively large, aerobic, self-replicating, and short-lived.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
However, simulations with various water models find that ice nucleated and grown under atmospheric temperatures is at all sizes stacking-disordered, consisting of random sequences of cubic and hexagonal ice layers3,4,5,6,7,8.
From Nature ● Nov. 7, 2017
Margulis has summarized the now considerable body of data indicating that the modern nucleated cell was made up, part by part, by the coming together of just such prokaryotic animals.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
"And all of the ice nucleation in nature that is extremely effective seems to be done by proteins, although the size of the individual ice nucleating proteins vary a lot among organisms."
From Science Daily ● Nov. 13, 2023
The quantification of ice nucleating particles and understanding their properties proved to be a cumbersome challenge.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 28, 2023
But the thing I would gently push back on is that the notion of a collision nucleating some vast explosion is not at all clear.
From The Verge ● Dec. 17, 2021
The first galaxies probably started out small and disorganized, nucleating around clumps of dark matter, unseen stuff that makes up 85% of the matter of the universe.
From Science Magazine ● Nov. 11, 2021
Men are nucleating in a fashion foreboding, but certain.
From A Hero and Some Other Folks by William A. (William Alfred) Quayle
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.
