- past tense form of precipitate.
- past participle of precipitate.
precipitated
Americanadjective
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having been brought on suddenly or prematurely.
Pressure on the tender spot causes the patient to physically react to the precipitated pain by exclaiming or moving.
Operators are requesting compensation for losses incurred due to the precipitated shutdown of reactors after the accident.
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Chemistry. (of solid material) having been separated from a solution, such as by evaporation or through the use of a reagent.
You can tell the reaction is complete from the purple color of the precipitated sodium chloride.
The precipitated salts give the dry lake bed a white color resembling a beach.
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Meteorology. having fallen as rain, snow, hail, etc..
Most of the precipitated water moves along these defined channels before being discharged into streams.
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of precipitated
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.
Greenspan is now blamed for looking the other way as banks and brokerage firms bought and sold massive amounts of risky mortgage debt, which precipitated the devastating global financial crisis of 2008.
From MarketWatch ● May 10, 2026
It also precipitated devastating civil wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya, which triggered large-scale migration from the region to Europe.
From Barron's ● Apr. 10, 2026
They said that the tax problems which precipitated her departure from the cabinet last autumn are occasionally mentioned by voters on the doorstep as an example of their frustration with the Labour government.
From BBC ● Mar. 18, 2026
Sicily precipitated the eventual collision between Carthage and Rome.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 11, 2026
He had precipitated it in dense, swirling strands out of white blood cells that he had wrung out of human pus in surgical dressings.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
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.
