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percolate

If the news of your victory in the spelling bee spread slowly through your entire school, you could sit back and enjoy watching it percolate. When something percolates, it spreads gradually.

When a liquid percolates, it's filtered through something, and when an idea percolates, it's filtered through a group of people. Percolate often refers specifically to coffee, which is brewed by mixing ground coffee beans with hot water and filtering them through paper — in other words, coffee percolates. The Latin root is percolatus, which comes from per, or "through," plus colare, "to strain."

PRIMARY MEANINGS OF: percolate

1
 vn
cause (a solvent) to pass through a permeable substance in order to extract a soluble constituent
the product of percolation
2
 v
gain or regain energy
FULL DEFINITIONS OF: percolate
1

v cause (a solvent) to pass through a permeable substance in order to extract a soluble constituent

v prepare in a percolator

“percolate coffee”

v pass through

Synonyms:
filter, permeate, sink in
Types:
infiltrate
pass into or through by filtering or permeating
infiltrate
cause (a liquid) to enter by penetrating the interstices
Type of:
penetrate, perforate
pass into or through, often by overcoming resistance

v permeate or penetrate gradually

Synonyms:
leach
Type of:
dribble, filter, trickle
run or flow slowly, as in drops or in an unsteady stream

v spread gradually

“Light percolated into our house in the morning”
Type of:
diffuse, fan out, spread, spread out
move outward

n the product of percolation

Type of:
filtrate
the product of filtration; a gas or liquid that has been passed through a filter
2

v gain or regain energy

Synonyms:
gain vigor, perk, perk up, pick up
Type of:
convalesce, recover, recuperate
get over an illness or shock
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