decontaminate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to make (an object or area) safe for unprotected personnel by removing, neutralizing, or destroying any harmful substance, as radioactive material or poisonous gas.
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to make free of contamination; purify.
to decontaminate a sickroom.
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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decontaminatesimple
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decontaminatessimple
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have decontaminatedperfect
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has decontaminatedperfect
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am decontaminatingprogressive
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are decontaminatingprogressive
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is decontaminatingprogressive
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have been decontaminatingperfect progressive
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has been decontaminatingperfect progressive
Past
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decontaminatedsimple
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had decontaminatedperfect
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was decontaminatingprogressive
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were decontaminatingprogressive
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had been decontaminatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of decontaminate
First recorded in 1935–40; de- + contaminate
Explanation
To decontaminate is to clean something that's been poisoned or polluted. After last week's chemical spill, your chemist mom can't go back to the lab until they decontaminate the building. When something is contaminated, it's made unsafe for humans (and other living things) due to some kind of poison or impurity. Workers have to decontaminate, or remove the contamination, after a disaster at a nuclear reactor produces radioactivity. An oil spill in the ocean requires a different type of decontamination. Hospital cleaners also have to decontaminate areas where patients with infectious diseases have been, scrubbing surfaces and filtering the air.
Vocabulary lists containing decontaminate
Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Prefixes: de-
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Novel Study: Everything, Everything, Pages 1–121
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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:
An area near the site remained under a shelter-in-place order as emergency responders continued to monitor and decontaminate the hazards.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 22, 2026
One email asked whether clinics could decontaminate rooms where people with measles had just been if the clinics were too small to follow the CDC’s recommendation to keep those rooms empty for two hours.
From Salon ● Aug. 26, 2025
That’s sent water treatment operators scrambling to find ways to decontaminate water supplies without breaking the bank.
From Science Magazine ● Nov. 20, 2024
Finding better ways to decontaminate soil is critical for improved disaster readiness, making it a national security priority, Deng said.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 17, 2023
For morale purposes, Central Authority let it be known that they were able to decontaminate it, but what actually happened was that the spores lost their effectiveness within a few years of their original seeding.
From Shock Absorber by Dongen, H. R. van
"We created DecontPro, a statistical model that decontaminates two sources of contamination that were observed empirically in CITE-seq data," explains corresponding author Joshua Campbell, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the School.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 17, 2023
When a uranium mill shuts down, here is what's supposed to happen: The company demolishes the buildings, decontaminates the surrounding soil and water, and encases the waste to stop it from leaking cancer-causing pollution.
From Salon ● Dec. 6, 2022
A healthcare worker, who volunteered in the Ebola response, decontaminates his colleague in the eastern Congolese town of Beni in the Democratic Republic of Congo, October 8, 2019.
From Reuters ● Sep. 27, 2022
A doctor who cares for people with COVID-19 in Tijuana, Mexico, decontaminates his clothing and other items before entering his apartment.Credit:
From Nature ● Jul. 23, 2020
Anyone coming into the Mount Airy ranch house decontaminates in the basement first.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 3, 2020
Officials have decontaminated the facility’s inmate housing as a precaution and medical staff are monitoring prisoners and staff for possible symptoms, The Mercury News reported.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2026
When reused, the decontaminated robots still picked up plastic and microbes, albeit smaller amounts of both.
From Science Daily ● May 8, 2024
In hospitals, his system uses electromagnetic fields to track surgical instruments, ensuring they are decontaminated and sterilised properly, and available in the right place at the right time.
From BBC ● Dec. 29, 2023
Then the site is cleaned and decontaminated, a process that includes removing organic materials like manure and chicken feed that can harbor virus particles.
From Salon ● Nov. 19, 2022
“It would only be for half an hour. He could get decontaminated like Mr. Waterman and then—” “Are you crazy?”
From "Everything, Everything" by Nicola Yoon
The new law sets France "the goal of decontaminating soil and water polluted" by the pesticide, according to a copy on the parliament's website.
From Barron's ● Jun. 2, 2026
Workers at Catalyst Refiners Inc. in Institute, W.Va., were cleaning and decontaminating a metal processing site—in preparation for closing it down—when a chemical reaction created dangerous hydrogen sulfide gas around 9:30 a.m.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 22, 2026
"We are trying to get the site to a phase called 'safe store', which means a lot of dismantling, demolition, carefully decontaminating items on site and then retreating the site back to a safe store."
From BBC ● Apr. 25, 2025
“Hazmat recommends decontaminating your uniform prior to entering your home,” the message concluded.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 16, 2025
If we do find such a substance we still have the problem of decontaminating existing metals.
From The Year When Stardust Fell by Jones, Raymond F.
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.
