desiccate

verb des·ic·cate \ ˈde-si-ˌkāt \

Definition of desiccate

desiccated; desiccating

transitive verb

1 :to dry up

the desiccated land

2 :to preserve (a food) by drying :dehydrate

desiccated coconut

3 :to drain of emotional or intellectual vitality

… a charming little romance … not desiccated and compressed within the pages of a book
—Elinor Wylie

intransitive verb

:to become dried up

leaves desiccating in winter

Lake Valencia has been … steadily desiccating for more than 200 years.
—J. Platt Bradbury et al.

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desiccation

play \ˌde-si-ˈkā-shən\ noun

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desiccative

play \ˈde-si-ˌkā-tiv\ adjective

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desiccator

play \ˈde-si-ˌkā-tər\ noun

desiccate was our Word of the Day on 04/19/2015. Hear the podcast!

Examples of desiccate in a Sentence

that historian's dryasdust prose desiccates what is actually an exciting period in European history
add a cup of desiccated coconut to the mix

Recent Examples of desiccate from the Web

WHETHER from neglect, lack of rain or water-use restrictions, many plants end their days a sorry mess: brown and brittle in parched patio containers or desiccated in balcony planters.

— bart ziegler, WSJ, "Feisty not Thirsty: The 7 Best Drought-Tolerant Flowers," 15 June 2017
The idea that they were buried under the sand and desiccated and lacking any sort of moisture.

— joanna robinson, VanityFair.com, "This Walking Dead Producer Doesn’t Get What’s Gone Wrong with His Show," 3 Apr. 2017
The giraffe—looking desiccated but not disfigured—was put on display in a clear, airless box.

— ian parker, The New Yorker, "Killing Animals at the Zoo," 16 Jan. 2017
Scales form over buds to protect them from desiccating or drying out, and from freezing temperatures.

— bonnie blodgett, Twin Cities, "Blundering Gardener: Your soil is your soil. Or is it?," 14 Jan. 2017
Biologists have been discovering all kinds of organisms on Earth capable of thriving in extreme environments, such as frozen Arctic tundra and desiccated deserts.

— National Geographic, "Going to Mars Could Mess Up the Hunt for Alien Life," 25 Sep. 2016
Many of us live on patches of ground that look as desiccated as that roof Novak started with.

— dominique browning, New York Times, "THE ROOFTOP GROWING GUIDE: How to Transform Your Roof Into a Vegetable Garden or Farm (Ten Speed, paper, $23)," 1 June 2016
The sea separated from the world’s oceans 5.6 million years ago and was desiccated by evaporation in a period geologists call the Messinian salinity crisis.

— lisa grossman, WIRED, "Mediterranean Sea Saved by Monumental Flood," 9 Dec. 2009

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'desiccate.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

Raisins are desiccated grapes; they're also dehydrated grapes. And yet, a close look at the etymologies of desiccate and dehydrate raises a tangly question. In Latin siccus means "dry," whereas the Greek stem hydr- means "water." So how could it be that desiccate and dehydrate are synonyms? The answer is in the multiple identities of the prefix de-. It may look like the same prefix, but the de- in desiccate means "completely, thoroughly," as in despoil ("to spoil utterly") or denude ("to strip completely bare"). The de- in dehydrate, on the other hand, means "remove," the same as it does in defoliate ("to strip of leaves") or in deice ("to rid of ice").