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

• 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

• lubricant
• lubrication
• lube

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.
• “lubricate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “lubricate”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• trabeculi

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /luː.briˈkaː.te/, [ɫ̪uːbrɪˈkäːt̪ɛ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /lu.briˈka.te/, [lubriˈkäːt̪e]

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