cerebrate
Americanverb (used with or without object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of cerebrate
1870–75; back formation from cerebration. See cerebrum, -ation
Explanation
Cerebrate is a fancy, old-fashioned way to say "ponder" or "think really hard." When you're completing the essay section of a test, you should leave yourself enough time to cerebrate before you start writing. If you love to cerebrate, you may want to be a philosopher some day, spending your time thinking and reasoning about various subjects. This verb comes from cerebration, or "the thought process." You need a high-functioning brain in order to cerebrate well, and it's no coincidence: the Latin root is cerebrum, or "brain."
Vocabulary lists containing cerebrate
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:
I’m uncomfortable with too much intimacy, afraid of female need, quicker to anger than sadness, apt to cerebrate rather than experience my emotions.
From Slate ● May 17, 2018
It is one thing to cerebrate; to narrate is quite another.
From Time Magazine Archive
In addition to dispensing stateliness of presence, ring of voice, ability to cerebrate while vertical, and modern substitutes for the Demosthenic pebble, Dr. Covington studies the vocabulation of his charges.
From Time Magazine Archive
One M. L. Lederer had accused Dr. Emanuel Lasker, German chess master, onetime world's champion, of employing unfair tactics for the purpose of impairing his opponents' powers to cerebrate.
From Time Magazine Archive
Highbrows always cerebrate about the movies in one way or another.
From Outside Inn by Kelley, Ethel M. (Ethel May)
But it is inchoate, stumbling, strange; and art, after all, must, I fancy, be more clear-cut than this, must be, in Anglo-Saxon literature at least, most carefully cerebrated.
From Time Magazine Archive
"I've cerebrated all day for seven bodies besides my own and I find it wearing."
From Old Rose and Silver by Reed, Myrtle
I shall give a single illustration of how this more celebrated than cerebrated "divine" is pleased to think that he thinks.
From The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays 1909 by Howes, S. O. (Silas Orrin)
Not for nothing was this man cerebrated throughout Methodism as a saver of souls.
From Tales of the Five Towns by Bennett, Arnold
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.
