-cate

To connect, to link, or to enable the transmission of messages between two spaces, individuals, etc.: The doors between the two rooms made it easy for the children and their parents to intercommunicate with each other.

The sisters, Patricia and Julia, often intercommunicate with each other by phone and e-mail.

1. To make someone drunk with alcohol or stupefied with drugs or other substances: At the birthday party, the host served strong alcoholic drinks that intoxicated the guests so much that they all had to take taxis to get back home!
2. To cause a person to become intensely excited or overjoyed to such a degree that he or she becomes irrational and uncontrollable: Winning $200,000 in the lottery intoxicated Mary so much that she couldn’t sleep that night!
3. To poison people: The deadly substance was detected before it was mixed with the orange juice which could have intoxicated just about everyone who was at the meeting.
4. Etymology: from Latin intoxicat-, from intoxicare, "to poison"; from Latin toxicum, ''poison".

1. To entangle; to involve; to make complicated: When Doris presented her report to her biology class, the students accused her of intricating it with too many incomprehensible terms that they never heard of before.
2. Etymology: from Latin intricare, "to entangle, to perplex"; from in-, "in, into" + tricare, "to trick, to complicate, to perplex".

1. To discover or find out the position of something or someone: Bernice tried to track down or to locate the house of her grandparents who had lived in the town for many years.
2. To situate or to assign a place to someone: The European firm wants to locate some of its employees to its sister company in San Francisco.
3. To be established in a particular place: Ted's bank is located in the center of town so all the residents can go there conveniently.

1. To apply oil, grease, or other similar substances to engine components in machines, automobiles, etc. so they will slide smoothly and easily against each other: When something is lubricated, it reduces friction and wear on the connecting parts and so they do not wear out so quickly.

Sometimes a person needs to lubricate rusty bolts so they can be unscrewed.

Mechanics who work on cars usually need to lubricate certain engine parts in order to remove old ones and to attach new ones.

Different kinds of machines and engines, from jumbo jets to sewing machines, need to be lubricated in order for them to work properly.

Hyaluronic acid, a viscous slippery substance that lubricates the joints in the body, maintains the shape of the eyeballs, and is a key component of connective tissue, is inside the knees, elbows, fingers, etc. of people and it helps to lubricate and cushion the joints; in fact, hyaluronic acid is a lubricating substance found naturally in all of the joints of the body.

2. Etymology: from Latin lubricatum, "made slippery".

1. To chew or to grind food with the teeth: Animals; such as, horses and cows manducate or consume hay, grains, and grass when they are eating.

People also manducate when they are satisfying their appetites during meals or snacks.

2. Etymology: from Latin manducare, "to chew".

1. To chew, grind, or pulverize food inside the mouth using the teeth and jaws until it becomes soft and liquid before letting it go down the throat and into the stomach: Tina told her children that they should masticate their food well before swallowing it and not to just gobble and gulp it down!
2. Etymology: from Latin masticare, from the Greek mastikhan, "to grind the teeth". © ALL rights are reserved.

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1. To treat a disease with pharmaceutical drugs or prescriptions: Rebecca was so sick that her doctor had to medicate her so she could be healthy again.

Doctor Nelson wants to medicate James, her patient, with a different prescription because he apparently has developed a strange allergy to the other drug.

2. To include healing substances for treatment of an unhealthy condition: One of the shampoos that Erla has was medicated with a therapeutic chemical to prevent dandruff from developing on her head.
3. To chemically infuse a curative fluid with ingredients that improve one's bodily injuries: After falling on the ice and hurting herself badly, Lynn’s mother had to medicate her pains and bruises with a special ointment from the drug store.

To plead with others for financial contributions: There are those who mendicate by asking for a donation of money or they may even play musical instruments in hopes that passers-by will donate some cash in a container; such as, a hat or bowl), that is in front of them.

To make or to produce many roots or rootlets: Some plants have more parts that grow or multiradicate underground than other vegetation.

1. To create a nest for breeding and habitation: The birds were nidificating a residence in a tree just outside Tom's bedroom window.

Some spiders nidificate underground in order to protect their lodgings.

Some birds make a more or less extensive use of saliva as a cement in order to nidificate mud dwellings; such as, swallows, South American oven birds, and flamingos.

The use of salivary glands to nidificate their nesting places is done generally by swifts which glue small twigs to the inside of a chimney to form a tiny basket; or, as in the case of the Asiatic edible swifts, they just use saliva without twigs or anything else. Such places are harvested early in the nest-building season and used by some Chinese when they make "bird's nest soup".

2. Etymology: from Latin nidificare, "to make into a nest". © ALL rights are reserved.

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The phrase "for the birds" also means something that is "worthless", "useless", or "undesirable".

1. To confuse, to bewilder, or to stupefy: A person's mind may be obfuscated by liquor.
2. To darken, to make obscure, or to make something more difficult to understand: Bill tried to obfuscate his drunken driving with extraneous information about taking medication; however, the odor of alcohol on his breath was not obfuscating his real condition.

Politicians tend to keep obfuscating issues in an attempt to satisfy the various viewpoints of their political parties.

3. Etymology: from Latin obfuscatus and obfuscare, "to darken," from ob, "over" + fuscare, "to make dark"; from fuscus, "dark". © ALL rights are reserved.

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1. To make a person less angry, upset, or hostile; usually, by doing or saying something to please him or her: Because his wife was so dismayed at him coming home so late from work, Greg tried to placate her by promising to treat her to a nice restaurant tomorrow evening.
2. To calm down and to make less angry; especially, by appeasement; to conciliate; to pacify: The administrators placated the customers by agreeing to consider a reduction in prices for the items when they became available again.

The clerk was placating the angry customer with an apology and a new replacement for the damaged item that was returned.

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1. To talk about something in an all-knowing and self-important way even when the speaker is not qualified to express such information: Jane’s friend tended to pontificate about health issues, telling other people what they should do in order to stay healthy despite the fact she was sick quite often.

Jane's daughter, who was fifteen, pontificated with her friends in her high school about the best way to raise children.

2. Etymology: from Latin pontificare, "to speak or to behave as if the person knows everything" from pons, "bridge" + facere "to make." © ALL rights are reserved.
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1. That part of a sentence or clause that has a verb which says something about the subject or the object: An example of a predicate is "went home" in the sentence, "Jack and Jill went home".
2. Etymology: from Latin, praedicatum, "something declared" and praedicatus,"declared, proclaimed"; from the verb praedicare; from prae, "beforehand" + dicare, "to make known".