irrigate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to supply (land) with water by artificial means, as by diverting streams, flooding, or spraying.
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Medicine/Medical. to supply or wash (an orifice, wound, etc.) with a spray or a flow of some liquid.
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to moisten; wet.
verb
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to supply (land) with water by means of artificial canals, ditches, etc, esp to promote the growth of food crops
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med to bathe or wash out a bodily part, cavity, or wound
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(tr) to make fertile, fresh, or vital by or as if by watering
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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irrigationnoun
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irrigatornoun
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overirrigateverb (used with object)
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reirrigateverb (used with object)
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irrigableadjective
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irrigationaladjective
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nonirrigatedadjective
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nonirrigatingadjective
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unirrigatedadjective
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well-irrigatedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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irrigatesimple
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irrigatessimple
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have irrigatedperfect
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has irrigatedperfect
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am irrigatingprogressive
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are irrigatingprogressive
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is irrigatingprogressive
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have been irrigatingperfect progressive
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has been irrigatingperfect progressive
Past
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irrigatedsimple
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had irrigatedperfect
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was irrigatingprogressive
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were irrigatingprogressive
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had been irrigatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of irrigate
1605–15; < Latin irrigātus, past participle of irrigāre to wet, flood, nourish with water, equivalent to ir- ir- 1 + rigā- (stem of rigāre to provide with water, soak) + -tus past participle suffix
Explanation
To irrigate is to supply with water, usually with ditches and channels that allow the water to flow. Irrigating is a type of watering that is important in one field in particular: farming. If a farmer has a huge number of crops, you can see how getting water to them could be difficult. The farmer irrigates by digging little channels that allow hard-to-reach spots to receive water. If there is a drought, irrigating will have to happen often to save the crops. People with large gardens might need to irrigate as well. Irrigating waters plants, keeping them alive.
Vocabulary lists containing irrigate
Civilizations and Peoples of the Fertile Crescent, Lessons 1–2
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Chapter 1: The First Americans
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Unit 1: Ecological Systems
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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:
A water source gets contaminated in some way, and that water is then used to irrigate a field.
From Slate ● Jul. 17, 2026
Then you’d have to add on the costs to irrigate and maintain the fields.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
A network of pumps and pipes then distributes the water across miles of arid land to irrigate the farms that have helped to green the desert.
From BBC ● Feb. 18, 2026
With practically no fuel left, he is finding it ever harder to harvest and irrigate his crops, relying for power mainly on a solar panel provided by the state.
From Barron's ● Feb. 17, 2026
Whether this would be a wise move or not, especially if others in Milagro were willing to irrigate that beanfield, was another question.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
But thousands of men were pouring into Redding to build the dam — a 602-foot concrete behemoth that irrigates millions of acres of Central Valley farmland — and they sure worked up an appetite.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 7, 2026
A water system irrigates the plants via a nutrient substrate, a liquid fertiliser that replaces the nutrients and minerals naturally present in the soil.
From Barron's ● Feb. 17, 2026
Nearby, water pumped from the Ogallala Aquifer irrigates fields of peanuts and cotton.
From Salon ● May 7, 2024
And because most pumped groundwater irrigates crops, major declines in availability could lead to a global food crisis.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 25, 2023
Milan, then having a population of two hundred thousand, had turned a great river into the fields,—which to this day irrigates thousands of acres of rice-lands.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 68, June, 1863 by Various
Janssen explained that 200 units of nitrogen are used per acre of irrigated corn.
From Salon ● Apr. 25, 2026
The property features three creeks that “meander through the ranch for over five miles,” as well as irrigated meadows and “historic water rights irrigating 1,200 acres.”
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 23, 2025
It has argued that just a 2% reduction in the amount of water it gets from the Nile could result in the loss of 200,000 acres of irrigated land.
From BBC ● Jul. 3, 2025
Other scenarios simulate idling irrigated farmland, reducing pumping in areas where groundwater levels are forecast to decrease the most, setting limits on how much groundwater can be pumped and curtailing junior water rights.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 20, 2024
In the old days, the winds swept through the irrigated plains around Jalalabad where farmers grew sugarcane, and impregnated the city's air with a sweet scent.
From "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini
It's essential to the entire operation here: irrigating young plants, spraying fertilizers and plowing the soil.
From Barron's ● Apr. 11, 2026
The property features three creeks that “meander through the ranch for over five miles,” as well as irrigated meadows and “historic water rights irrigating 1,200 acres.”
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 23, 2025
He had the cost of irrigating twice more over the summer due to prolonged hot weather.
From BBC ● Dec. 18, 2025
Cotton growers objected to irrigating 1 million acres in the Imperial Valley, corn farmers objected to a million more acres of corn, and wheat growers to a million competing acres of wheat.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 5, 2025
“Mostly who he talked about, as I understand it,” said Ray Gusdorf, “was Charley Bloom. And of course you, Joe. He said irrigating that beanfield was your idea and his.”
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
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.
