IRRADIATE Synonyms: 87 Similar and Opposite Words

irradiate

verb

i-ˈrā-dē-ˌāt

Definition of irradiate

as in to illumine

to supply with light the light from a galaxy of flashing signs irradiates the heart and soul of Las Vegas

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in to radiate

to throw or give off irradiating an aura of supreme confidence on the playing field

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of irradiate The sterile flies are irradiated and released en masse, designed to blanket a region experiencing an outbreak. — Evan Bush, NBC news, 7 June 2026 Vector control districts serving Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties have irradiated males and released them in recent years. — Lila Seidman, Los Angeles Times, 4 June 2026 His team added soil that had been irradiated almost five years earlier, and then closed the circuit. — Siddhant Pusdekar, Quanta Magazine, 1 June 2026 Trump’s obsession with gold has led his critics to compare him to the Bond villain Goldfinger, a bullion dealer who hatches a plan to irradiate the gold in Fort Knox in order to increase the value of his own supply. — Jennifer Wilson, New Yorker, 4 May 2026 See All Example Sentences for irradiate

Recent Examples of Synonyms for irradiate

Verb

Fantastic, illumined by periodic excursions into surrealism, as when the crew of a mysterious UFO boards a transpacific Kahuna Airlines jet midflight.

— Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 9 Apr. 2026
Geraldine walked over to Felix and Jane’s for fish soup, through long autumn shadows in the park, haze rising like smoke from the grass, illumined by the low sun.

— Tessa Hadley, New Yorker, 25 Jan. 2026

Definition of illumine

Verb

One of them was Maggie Bieritz, one of those people who radiates joy and wit.

— Heidi Stevens, Chicago Tribune, 2 Oct. 2026
The jet carries 500,000 times the energy radiated by the sun and explains the mystery of how feeding black holes become such powerful cosmic particle accelerators and generate such high-energy gamma-ray photons.

— Robert Lea, Space.com, 24 Sep. 2026

Definition of radiate

Verb

This, Rostov’s main thoroughfare, wasn’t illuminated by the familiar bright glare of its many street lamps, or by light from its windows, now blacked out, but emerged from the darkness all the more gently in a milky cloak of moonlight.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, New Yorker, 27 Sep. 2026
The Aries Full Moon illuminates your private 12th house, bringing an old emotion, habit, memory, or attachment closer to the surface.

— Tarot.com, Hartford Courant, 26 Sep. 2026

Definition of illuminate

Verb

Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford had already shown that radioactive materials sometimes emitted particles, naturally changing the makeup of their atomic nuclei.

— Andrea Richard, The Conversation, 2 Oct. 2026
The physicists used that data to reconstruct the angles at which electrons and muons were emitted to infer the spins of the original Z bosons that preceded them.

— ArsTechnica, ArsTechnica, 2 Oct. 2026

Definition of emit

Verb

When their demands were met and extra staff sent to the school, the strike ended, but by then the match had been lit.

— Melissa Bell, CNN Money, 6 Oct. 2026
Researchers learned fumes accumulated in restaurants because pilot lights (small flames inside gas stoves that stay continuously lit) continued to burn gas after kitchens closed and ventilation fans were off.

— Tony Briscoe, Los Angeles Times, 6 Oct. 2026

Definition of light

Verb

Its unfurling will reveal an image of the cosmos overlain with blooming flowers and splintered prisms emanating rainbows.

— Jordan Riefe, Los Angeles Times, 2 Oct. 2026
The movie is an epic series of harrumphs and harangues, propelled from room to room—and, in time, out into the world beyond the estate—by a spirit of impudent absurdism and corrosive cynicism which seems to emanate from Digger himself.

— Justin Chang, New Yorker, 30 Sep. 2026

Definition of emanate

Verb

Mogwai, who would make their debut the year after Beat was released and with whom Bowery Electric would share a bill, would crouch in similarly unassuming and tense postures and use them to spring out and scare the bejeezus out of people.

— Sadie Sartini Garner, Pitchfork, 4 Oct. 2026
Never Enough, released in June 2025, is Turnstile’s fourth album and the follow-up to their 2021 breakthrough Glow On.

— Jessica Lynch, Billboard, 4 Oct. 2026

Definition of release

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irony

irradiate

irradiated

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“Irradiate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/irradiate. Accessed 8 Oct. 2026.

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Synonyms of irradiate

verb

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