Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To buzz; hum.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To buzz; make a buzzing sound; bombilate.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To hum; to boom.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb to
buzz orhum
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb make a buzzing sound
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Late Latin bombināre, bombināt-, variant of Latin bombilāre, from bombus, a rumbling, buzzing; see bomb.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Medieval Latin bombināre, present active infinitive of bombinō ("buzz, hum"), variant of Latin bombilō, from Ancient Greek βομβυλιάζειν (bombuliázein), from βόμβος (bómbos, "booming, humming"), of imitatory origin.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word bombinate.
Examples
-
Let them bombinate impotently forever, for all I care.
Archive 2008-07-01 2008
-
Like his co-workers he had been somewhat stampeded by Dorn's imitative faculties, faculties which enabled the former journalist to bombinate twice as loud in a void three times as great as any of his colleagues.
Erik Dorn Ben Hecht 1929
yarb commented on the word bombinate
"It was Knockespotch," Mr. Scogan continued, "the great Knockespotch, who delivered us from the dreary tyranny of the realistic novel. My life, Knockespotch said, is not so long that I can afford to spend precious hours writing or reading descriptions of middle-class interiors. He said again, 'I am tired of seeing the human mind bogged in a social plenum; I prefer to paint it in a vacuum, freely and sportively bombinating.'"
- Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow
March 29, 2008
acediscovery commented on the word bombinate
to buzz / hum / drone
November 28, 2008
bilby commented on the word bombinate
"He is often drunk. His head hurts. Snatches of conversation, remembered precepts, prefigured cries of terror bombinate about his skull."
- Elspeth Barker, 'Nobs and the rabble, all in the same boat', Independent, 22 September 1996.
May 11, 2009
milosrdenstvi commented on the word bombinate
Whoa! Cool!
May 11, 2009
gangerh commented on the word bombinate
Bombinate gives me a buzz. However, to me, abombinate sounds repugnant.
May 12, 2009