lubricate

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin lūbricātus, perfect passive participle of lūbricō (“make slippery”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) for more), from lūbricus (“slippery”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈluːbrɪkeɪt/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Verb

lubricate (third-person singular simple present lubricates, present participle lubricating, simple past and past participle lubricated)

1. To make slippery or smooth (normally to minimize friction) by applying a lubricant.

   Synonym: lube

   Hyponyms: lube up; oil, oil up; grease, grease up

   If your bicycle chain is squeaking you should lubricate it.

2. (humorous) To cause someone to become drunk, especially to make them more sociable or talkative.
   • 2021, Robert A. Webster, Fossils:

     They listened with wonder and pride at their album as it played several times throughout the afternoon, with Cosmo lubricating them with beer and whiskey.

   • 2021, Edward Slingerland, Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization:

     At Göbekli Tepe, a site in what is now modern-day Turkey we'll talk about more below, hunter-gatherers convened regularly throughout the tenth to eighth millennia BCE to feast on gazelles, build circular structures, and erect enormous T-shaped limestone pillars carved with mysterious pictograms and animal forms–probably all while well-lubricated with beer.

Derived terms

• lube
• lubricant
• lubrication
• lubricative
• lubricator
• lubricin
• mislubricate
• overlubricate
• relubricate
• underlubricate

Related terms

• lubricity

Translations

to make slippery or smooth

Bulgarian: смазвам (bg) (smazvam) Catalan: lubricar (ca), lubrificar (ca) Chinese: Mandarin: 潤滑 / 润滑 (zh) (rùnhuá) Czech: mazat (cs) Dutch: smeren (nl) Esperanto: lubriki Estonian: määrima Finnish: voidella (fi) French: lubrifier (fr) German: schmieren (de) Greek: λιπαίνω (el) (lipaíno) Hungarian: ken (hu), síkosít, olajoz (hu), beolajoz (hu), zsíroz (hu), bezsíroz (hu), megolajoz (hu) Ido: lubrifikar (io) Italian: lubrificare (it) Japanese: 注油する (ja) (ちゅうゆする, chūyu-suru) Khmer: ដាក់ប្រេង (dakpreeng) Ladin: onjer, onje Latin: lūbricō Maori: whakamaene Ottoman Turkish: یاغلامق (yağlamak) Piedmontese: lubrifiché Portuguese: lubrificar (pt) Romanian: lubrifia (ro) Russian: сма́зывать (ru) impf (smázyvatʹ), сма́зать (ru) pf (smázatʹ) Scottish Gaelic: lìomh Spanish: lubricar (es), lubrificar (es) Swedish: smörja (sv) Tagalog: danlugan Thai: please add this translation if you can Turkish: yağlamak (tr)

Further reading

• “lubricate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “lubricate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “lubricate”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• trabeculi

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ɫuː.brɪˈkaː.tɛ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [lu.briˈkaː.t̪e]

Verb

lūbricāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of lūbricō

Spanish

Verb

lubricate

1. second-person singular voseo imperative of lubricar combined with te