innervate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to communicate nervous energy to; stimulate through nerves.
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to furnish with nerves; grow nerves into.
verb
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to supply nerves to (a bodily organ or part)
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to stimulate (a bodily organ or part) with nerve impulses
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of innervate
Explanation
Unless you’re into anatomy or zoology, you probably don’t need the word innervate very often. It’s pronounced “inNERVate," accent on the “nerve.” To innervate is “to supply nerves to.” It also means “to stimulate” or “to supply with energy.” The word innervate sounds like what it is — it means to “put the nerves into” something. When nerves go into muscle fiber, they innervate the muscle fiber. Innervate is to supply nerves to something, but it can also mean to energize. Think of all the energy you have when you get nervous! Sometimes nervousness can even innervate the hairs on your arms, i.e. stimulate them and make them stand up.
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:
They knew that vocal cord adduction is controlled by laryngeal motor neurons, so they began by tracing backward to find the neurons that innervate those motor neurons.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 7, 2024
Your sensory neurons innervate all the muscles in your body, and from how much your muscles are stretched, you have a very visual—without actually looking—image of where your limbs are.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 8, 2021
Some parts of the body might be more sensitive to NaV1.7 blockers than others, because neurons that innervate one organ might have different populations of ion channels than neurons in another.
From Nature ● Sep. 10, 2019
“As it goes down, the branches innervate the muscle, and then it goes down to the thumb over here,” he says.
From National Geographic ● Jul. 29, 2016
Sympathetic nervous system: applied to the nerves and ganglia of the alimentary canal and sonic other viscera which they innervate; = vagus; visceral nervous system.
From Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology by John. B. Smith
The researchers knew that muscles become less innervated, or infiltrated with nerves, as people and animals age.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 11, 2023
A motor unit is formed by a motor neuron and all of the muscle fibers that are innervated by that same motor neuron.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 19, 2013
All of the other muscles are innervated by the oculomotor nerve, as is the levator palpebrae superioris.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 19, 2013
The lateral rectus, which causes abduction of the eye, is innervated by the abducens nerve.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 19, 2013
Hands on rail, with a last supreme burst of the energy that innervated his dying body, he vaulted clear.
From The Flying Legion by George Allan England
Using mouse antibodies that glom on to proteasomes, and other methods, the investigators found the proteasomes on the surface of neurons in the spinal cord, dorsal root ganglia, sciatic nerve and peripheral nerves innervating skin.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 12, 2024
Secretion of these hormones is stimulated by acetylcholine release from preganglionic sympathetic fibers innervating the adrenal medulla.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
The sequence of events that result in the contraction of an individual muscle fiber begins with a signal—the neurotransmitter, ACh—from the motor neuron innervating that fiber.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 19, 2013
There were swelling songs, innervating rain storms, and jiggly dances, but no onscreen kissing.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 2, 2012
The ganglia of the three post-oral segments, which bear the jaws, have fused in one compound ganglion innervating the mouth and jaws.
From The Whence and the Whither of Man A Brief History of His Origin and Development through Conformity to Environment; Being the Morse Lectures of 1895 by John Mason Tyler
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.
