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:
The skin may suppurate or slough more or less over the areas of greatest tension or where it is irritated by blows or pressure.
From Special Report on Diseases of the Horse by Charles B. Michener
Scrofula, skrof′ū-la, n. a disease with chronic swellings of the glands in various parts of the body, esp. the neck, tending to suppurate: the king's evil.—adjs.
From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 4 of 4: S-Z and supplements) by Various
The inflamed bursa, which sometimes communicates with the joint, may suppurate, and the infection may spread to the joint.
From Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. by Alexander Miles
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 Erasmus Darwin
Soon slight cracks appear transversely, and may gain in depth and width, and may even suppurate.
From Special Report on Diseases of the Horse by Charles B. Michener
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
He died on the 17th instant, of an imposthume of his lungs, which having suppurated and burst, he had not strength to throw off the matter, and was suffocated by it.
From Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 3 by Thomas Jefferson Randolph
The proof taken in the case establishes that before enlistment the beneficiary had a sore on his leg which was quite troublesome, which suppurated, and after healing would break out again.
From A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents Volume 8, part 3: Grover Cleveland, First Term by James D. (James Daniel) Richardson
In conclusion I will only make the further remark, that shell wounds, with the exception of clean leaden shrapnel tracks, always suppurated.
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 George Henry Makins
All this comes before a close-up on a suppurating bedsore.
From Salon ● Oct. 4, 2024
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
Guerline Brumaches, 40, was languishing in a corner, naked from the waist up, with a suppurating wound the size of a baseball on her swollen left foot where she had been cut by flying debris.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 3, 2016
"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.
