segregate
Americanverb (used with object)
-
segregates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
segregated,
past participle, past
-
segregating
present participle
-
to separate or set apart from others or from the main body or group; isolate.
to segregate exceptional children; to segregate hardened criminals.
- Antonyms:
- integrate
-
to require, by law or custom, the separation of (an ethnic, racial, religious, or other minority group) from the dominant majority.
verb (used without object)
-
segregates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
segregated,
past participle, past
-
segregating
present participle
-
to separate, withdraw, or go apart; separate from the main body and collect in one place; become segregated.
-
to practice, require, or enforce segregation, especially racial segregation.
-
Genetics. (of allelic genes) to separate during meiosis.
noun
verb
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to set or be set apart from others or from the main group
-
(tr) to impose segregation on (a racial or minority group)
-
genetics metallurgy to undergo or cause to undergo segregation
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
-
segregatornoun
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resegregateverb
-
nonsegregableadjective
-
nonsegregativeadjective
-
segregableadjective
-
segregativeadjective
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unsegregableadjective
-
unsegregatingadjective
-
unsegregativeadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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segregatesimple
-
segregatessimple
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have segregatedperfect
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has segregatedperfect
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am segregatingprogressive
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are segregatingprogressive
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is segregatingprogressive
-
have been segregatingperfect progressive
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has been segregatingperfect progressive
Past
-
segregatedsimple
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had segregatedperfect
-
was segregatingprogressive
-
were segregatingprogressive
-
had been segregatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of segregate
1400–50 in sense “segregated”; 1535–45 as transitive v.; late Middle English segregat < Latin sēgregātus (past participle of sēgregāre to part from the flock), equivalent to sē- se- + greg- (stem of grex flock) + -ātus -ate 1; see gregarious
Explanation
To separate people by race or religion is to segregate them. In general, the word segregate means to separate one type of thing from another. In the United States, the practice of segregating blacks from whites in public schools and public places was common in the South until the 1960s. Because of this, people don't even like to use the word segregate in its neutral sense. But you could rightly say that new bicycle lanes are designed to segregate bikes from auto traffic.
Vocabulary lists containing segregate
We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball
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"Reading Lolita in Tehran," Vocabulary from the memoir
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Because They Marched
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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:
The model was trained to segregate the “pure news” in each article from that which was old and stale and, therefore, predictable.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 4, 2026
His aim wasn’t to segregate black history from the national narrative but to force its inclusion.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 4, 2026
Professors collaborated with the directors of the campus art museum and instructors in the social sciences and business departments, to demonstrate that knowledge is impossible to segregate or compartmentalize.
From Salon ● Mar. 16, 2024
Some police departments have started to segregate reports of package theft into their own category, which does show some worrying signs.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 21, 2023
The auditory cortex also recognizes the location of different sound sources in space, and can identify and segregate different auditory objects.
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
The factory accepts waste material which it then sorts and segregates.
From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2023
Having third-party services segregates these specific issues from the employer-employee relationship.
From New York Times ● Jul. 21, 2021
The Douglas County Jail has three pods for men in custody, which segregates inmates by minimum, medium and maximum risk classifications.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 16, 2016
The conventional narrative of U.S. history routinely segregates the “Indian wars” as a subspecialization within the dubious category “the West.”
From Salon ● Oct. 13, 2014
Later the divine WORD; the Creative Fiat, reverberates through space and segregates the homogeneous virgin substance into separate forms.
From The Rosicrucian Mysteries An Elementary Exposition of Their Secret Teachings by Max Heindel
Saar grew up in a partially segregated city and came of age in a society where Black women were expected to find practical work, not become artists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 15, 2026
"It brought a lot of people together in a very kind of segregated world that we're living in," said Zeileen Reardon, who spoke while watching the team play Morocco in a bar in Calgary.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2026
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. forces retreated inside fenced-off hubs, a process that has segregated them from local communities in the decades since.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 13, 2026
But she refused to perform before segregated audiences in the United States and spent much of her life in France.
From Barron's ● May 12, 2026
On a morning in December 1955, word reached Durham that blacks in Montgomery, Alabama, were boycotting the city’s segregated bus system.
From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson
At this World Cup, authorities didn’t bother segregating them, including at the potentially fractious semifinal between ancient enemies England and Argentina.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 18, 2026
It was launched in the 1970s by the federal government as an alternative to public housing projects, which were criticized for segregating poor families in neighborhoods with low-quality schools and other substandard services.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 8, 2025
Department of Justice sued Georgia for unnecessarily segregating people with developmental disabilities and mental illness.
From Salon ● Nov. 26, 2024
“But there are ways to provide support without segregating and grouping everybody with a disability into one place. We have a long way to go when it comes to that.”
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 8, 2023
“People aren’t even forcing us to sit apart, and we’re still segregating ourselves.”
From "The Parker Inheritance" by Varian Johnson
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.
