Wiktionary

dilate

See also: dilaté

English

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The pupil is dilated when it is remarkably enlarged.

Etymology

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From Middle English dilaten, from Old French dilater, from Latin dīlātō (“I spread out”), from di- (variant of dis-) + lātus (“wide”).

Pronunciation

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Verb

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dilate (third-person singular simple present dilates, present participle dilating, simple past and past participle dilated)

  1. (transitive) To enlarge; to make bigger.
    The eye doctor put drops in my eye to dilate the pupil so he could see the nerve better.
  2. (intransitive) To become wider or larger; to expand.
    Antonym: contract
    His heart dilates and glories in his strength.
  3. (transitive, intransitive) To speak largely and copiously; to dwell in narration; to enlarge; with "on" or "upon".
    • c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:
      Do me the favour to dilate at full / What hath befallen of them and thee till now.
    • 1810, George Crabbe, The Borough:
      But still they on their ancient joys dilate.
    • 2024 October 24, Judith Shulevitz, “Michel Houellebecq Has Some Fresh Predictions. Be Afraid.”, in The Atlantic‎[1]:
      Houellebecq’s men […] dilate lovingly upon the makes and models of cars and appliances, and the subsidiary brands of hospitality and conglomerates.
  4. (medicine, transitive, intransitive) To use a dilator to widen (something, such as a vagina).
    • 1896, The Chicago Medical Recorder, page 62:
      An experimenter in New York has recently advocated what he is pleased to call temporary forcible dilatation of the trachea in the treatment of membranous croup, his idea being to introduce into the trachea a dilator and to forcibly dilate, every few hours if need be, and he reports favorable results.
    • 1911, Abraham Leo Wolbarst, Gonorrhea in the Male: A Practical Guide to Its Treatment, page 148:
      In very tight and obstinate stricture I sometimes dilate every day, but as soon as it has been stretched up to 23 or 24, I dilate every other day, or at greater intervals, keeping the instrument in place several minutes.
    • 2010, Kehinde Adeola Ayeni, Feasts of Phantoms, Fisher King Press, →ISBN, page 148:
      He gave her some of the dilators he used to dilate her vagina shortly after the surgery and encouraged her to do it frequently.
    • 2012, Wolf Eicher, Götz Kockott, Sexology, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN:
      It is important to realize that a number of these women do not want to have their vaginismus treated but only to achieve pregnancy. […] The use of hard plastic rods with increasing diameters, a sort of pseudopenis, can be useful, provided it is explained to the woman that these rods are not used to dilate her vagina but are a means of training the relaxation of her pelvic muscles and of getting these muscles under control.

Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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Anagrams

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French

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Verb

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dilate

  1. inflection of dilater:
    1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
    2. second-person singular imperative

Anagrams

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Latin

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Participle

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dīlāte

  1. vocative masculine singular of dīlātus

Portuguese

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Verb

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dilate

  1. inflection of dilatar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative

Spanish

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Verb

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dilate

  1. inflection of dilatar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative
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