Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To make a crackling or popping sound; crackle.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To crackle; snap with a sharp, abrupt, and rapidly repeated sound, as salt in fire or during calcination.
- Specifically To rattle or crackle; use the crepitaculum, as a rattlesnake.
- In entomology, to eject suddenly from the anus, with a slight noise, a volatile fluid having somewhat the appearance of smoke and a strong pungent odor, as certain bombardier-beetles of the genus Brachinus and its allies.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To make a series of small, sharp, rapidly repeated explosions or sounds, as salt in fire; to crackle; to snap.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To
crackle , to make a crackling sound.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb make a crackling sound
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
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Examples
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You will take care to open your mouth, crepitate shoo shoo to Band-aid dollop.
Archive 2008-08-01 Lemon Hound 2008
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You will take care to open your mouth, crepitate shoo shoo to Band-aid dollop.
derek beaulieu on blert Lemon Hound 2008
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Kate could hardly remember now the dry rigid pallor of the heat, when the whole earth seemed to crepitate viciously with dry malevolence: like memory gone dry and sterile, hellish.
The Plumed Serpent 2003
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The sixpences do not "bang" in this country: they crepitate, they crackle, as though shot from a Maxim quick-firer.
America To-day, Observations and Reflections William Archer 1890
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As a matter of historical interest, the obsolete crepitate was used in the 19th century, but the term did not specify whether the gas being discharged was gastric or rectal.
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He also missed the essential semantic component of to crepitate, namely, ` to expell gas noisily, 'regardless of whether as a burp or a fart.
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John Grisham’s sentences thud and crepitate all over the page, and he has become a literary tycoon.
The Fiddler in the Subway Gene Weingarten 2010
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John Grisham’s sentences thud and crepitate all over the page, and he has become a literary tycoon.
The Fiddler in the Subway Gene Weingarten 2010
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John Grisham’s sentences thud and crepitate all over the page, and he has become a literary tycoon.
The Fiddler in the Subway Gene Weingarten 2010
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John Grisham’s sentences thud and crepitate all over the page, and he has become a literary tycoon.
The Fiddler in the Subway Gene Weingarten 2010
yarb commented on the word crepitate
Night, crepitating slowly, beat by beat.
- Russel Hoban, Kleinzeit
June 20, 2008
asativum commented on the word crepitate
This belongs on someone's not-what-you-think list.
June 20, 2008
knitandpurl commented on the word crepitate
"Applause crepitates, the magician bows, and the wedding party has still not arrived."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 181 of the NYRB paperback
November 7, 2010
qms commented on the word crepitate
It’s terribly hard to emulate
How speakers of Zulu articulate.
You must learn the tricks
Of consonant clicks-
To enunciate you must crepitate.
January 28, 2018