suppurate
Americanverb (used without object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of suppurate
1555–65; < Latin suppūrātus (past participle of suppūrāre ), equivalent to sup- sup- + pūr- (stem of pūs ) pus + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
To suppurate is to get infected and form pus. If that scrape on your knee starts to suppurate, you might want to go to the doctor. In medicine, suppurate is the official term for what you might think of as "become gross and full of pus." Pimples sometimes become swollen and painful before they suppurate, and cuts and scrapes that get infected can also suppurate, oozing a thick, white substance. We can trace this word back to a root that means both "matter from a sore" and "bitterness or malice."
Vocabulary lists containing suppurate
Beowulf
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Matilda
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Novel Study: Beowulf (trans. Seamus Heaney), Lines 1905–3182
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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:
These indolent tumours may be brought to suppurate sometimes by passing electric shocks through them every day for two or three weeks, as I have witnessed.
From Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Darwin, Erasmus
The absorbed fluids in their course to the veins in the scrophula are arrested in the lymphatic or conglobate glands; which swell, and after a great length of time, inflame and suppurate.
From Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Darwin, Erasmus
It must be noted, that these kinds of inflammation can exist together; and some parts of the cellular membrane may suppurate at the same time that the external skin is affected with erythema, or erysipelas.
From Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Darwin, Erasmus
When the outer skin begins to suppurate, it should be removed with a pair of pincers, and the patch treated as an open wound.
From Special Report on Diseases of the Horse by Michener, Charles B.
The Pustules appear, grow large, suppurate and attain their Maturity, without confining the Patient to his Bed, or lessening either his Sleep, or Appetite.
From Advice to the people in general, with regard to their health by Tissot, S. A. D. (Samuel Auguste David)
The wound became infected, suppurated, and when a surgeon eventually removed a portion of his jaw, it left a deformed face and an angry, short-tempered man.
From BBC ● Nov. 25, 2015
The Tin Drum and Dog Years are masterpieces of comedy and verbal invention about the culture and history that suppurated as the Third Reich.
From Time Magazine Archive
Mr. F——, about sixty, was supposed to have the gout in his hand, which however suppurated, and it was then called the suppurative rheumatism.
From Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Darwin, Erasmus
The track suppurated where it crossed the back, but the man did well until the twentieth day, when a swelling developed in the left iliac fossa and the general temperature rose to 102°.
From Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 Being Mainly a Clinical Study of the Nature and Effects of Injuries Produced by Bullets of Small Calibre by Makins, George Henry
A mucous discharge from the anus, called by some white piles, or matter from a suppurated pile, has been mistaken for the matter from a concealed fistula.
From Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Darwin, Erasmus
All this comes before a close-up on a suppurating bedsore.
From Salon ● Oct. 4, 2024
It’s all very trippy, and sometimes morbidly funny, studded with fan-friendly gashes of body horror, most often by way of Beau’s own angry, suppurating wounds.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 19, 2023
The banter is believable, as are the pinpricks of disquiet and the weird suppurating wounds that increasingly mar this otherwise ordinary scene and its genial hero.
From New York Times ● Aug. 26, 2021
Nothing human is alien to it, not suppurating psychic wounds, and especially not bodily functions.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 9, 2018
"I'll tell you what I'm talking about, you suppurating little blister!" the Trunchbull shouted.
From "Matilda" by Roald Dahl
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.
