stagnate
Americanverb (used without object)
-
stagnates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
stagnated,
past participle, past
-
stagnating
present participle
-
to cease to run or flow, as water, air, etc.
-
to be or become stale or foul from standing, as a pool of water.
-
to stop developing, growing, progressing, or advancing.
My mind is stagnating from too much TV.
-
to be or become sluggish and dull.
When the leading lady left, the show started to stagnate.
verb (used with object)
-
stagnates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
stagnated,
past participle, past
-
stagnating
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
stagnatesimple
-
stagnatessimple
-
have stagnatedperfect
-
has stagnatedperfect
-
am stagnatingprogressive
-
are stagnatingprogressive
-
is stagnatingprogressive
-
have been stagnatingperfect progressive
-
has been stagnatingperfect progressive
Past
-
stagnatedsimple
-
had stagnatedperfect
-
was stagnatingprogressive
-
were stagnatingprogressive
-
had been stagnatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of stagnate
1660–70; < Latin stāgnātus (past participle of stāgnāre ), equivalent to stāgn ( um ) pool of standing water + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
If after high school you choose to live in your parents' house, keep the same job, and spend time with the same friends, your mother might worry that you've decided to stagnate, or stop moving forward. When water stagnates, it stops moving and then sometimes begins to smell bad and attract mosquitoes. Think of a marshy pond or an old puddle. Similarly in the figurative sense, when the economy or society stagnates, it doesn't just sit still, it loses momentum. The word carries with it a negative connotation as something that stagnates really should be moving.
Vocabulary lists containing stagnate
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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:
"It's already starting to stagnate, so that's serious," said Catriona Bass, director of the Long Mead Foundation.
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2026
Whether he takes a wrecking ball to it or lets it stagnate, the Kennedy Center threatens to become his latest victim.
From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026
The housing market itself is one problem, as sales of existing homes, a key driver of improvement spending, stagnate.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
“That means once investors make an allocation it is reasonable to see that it will stagnate for a while causing volatility with lower volumes of shares traded,” he said in emailed comments.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 13, 2026
Without standardized materials and methods, they worried that the field of tissue culture would stagnate.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
The opposite can occur if the economy stagnates or shrinks.
From BBC ● May 18, 2026
“Decoupling seller profit from buyer satisfaction impedes economic growth and slows innovation. Buyer surplus stagnates and inflation accelerates.”
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 6, 2026
Last year's emissions cuts were driven by falls in energy-intensive industries, many of which are struggling as the economy stagnates, and record solar power generation.
From Barron's ● Jan. 7, 2026
As growth in pizza sales stagnates, competition between restaurants has intensified.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 5, 2026
Fields which slope considerably, and so regularly that water never stagnates upon or near their surface, do very well without.
From What I know of farming: a series of brief and plain expositions of practical agriculture as an art based upon science by Horace Greeley
While inflation rates have been increasing this year, the rates on many high-yield savings accounts have largely stagnated.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 14, 2026
But in a summer of soaring temperatures, The Hundred's crowds have stagnated.
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026
The city’s vouchers for the Community Cat Program have stagnated compared with vouchers for individuals with pets, Naitaki said, leading to explosive kitten seasons like this year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 11, 2026
Ireland’s economy returned to growth in the three months through June, boosting hopes for a pickup across the eurozone as a whole, where activity stagnated in the first quarter.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
Berkeley’s ability to exploit its increasingly inventive faculty’s work stagnated under this lumbering regime until 1931, when Sproul met Frederick Cottrell.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
Yet analysts fret over GM’s stagnating sales volumes and tightening consumer budgets.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 20, 2026
“They’re now moving from being a very quickly growing market to a stagnating and slower-growth market when it comes to transportation fuels,” mostly because of China’s massive push toward electric vehicles.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 1, 2026
One thing they do agree on: The size of the workforce has been stagnating for months.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026
Instead, he linked his positions to a broader critique of stagnating wages and inequality, citing decades of flat real earnings for most US workers as a driver of populist politics on both left and right.
From BBC ● Jun. 12, 2026
“I just feel like I’m stagnating, and it’s pretty obvious Sam isn’t interested in my development.”
From "Proud" by Ibtihaj Muhammad
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
