Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive & transitive verb To explode or cause to explode.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To cause to explode; specifically, to cause to explode with great suddenness and with a loud report.
- To explode with great suddenness and with a loud noise: as, niter detonates with sulphur.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To explode with a sudden report.
- transitive verb To cause to explode; to cause to burn or inflame with a sudden report.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb intransitive To
explode ; to blow up. Specifically, tocombust supersonically viashock compression . - verb transitive To cause an
explosion .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb cause to burst with a violent release of energy
- verb burst and release energy as through a violent chemical or physical reaction
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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I couldn't have been more confused had they used the word "detonate."
Jody Melto: Does This Car Seat Smell Bad To You? Jody Melto 2011
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I couldn't have been more confused had they used the word "detonate."
Jody Melto: Does This Car Seat Smell Bad To You? Jody Melto 2011
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I couldn't have been more confused had they used the word "detonate."
Jody Melto: Does This Car Seat Smell Bad To You? Jody Melto 2011
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I couldn't have been more confused had they used the word "detonate."
Jody Melto: Does This Car Seat Smell Bad To You? Jody Melto 2011
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One, a car bombing that was found in the -- a car bomb I should say, it did not detonate, which is the good news -- found in the Haymarket Theatre district as smoke coming out the passenger side of that vehicle.
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It was theorized that a round with much less than full case capacity of powder may sometimes "detonate" en mass instead of the normal burn from one end of the powder column to the other, this detonation produces a instant pressure spike that is so sudden that the bullet's inertia cannot be overcome quickly enough to let the pressure lower.
An Expert Gunsmith on Over-Pressure Rounds and Exploding Handguns 2009
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It was theorized that a round with much less than full case capacity of powder may sometimes "detonate" en mass instead of the normal burn from one end of the powder column to the other, this detonation produces a instant pressure spike that is so sudden that the bullet's inertia cannot be overcome quickly enough to let the pressure lower.
An Expert Gunsmith on Over-Pressure Rounds and Exploding Handguns 2009
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Make the grenade "detonate" and anything within a certain radius would pick this signal up and register a kill, anything beyond this radius would not pick up the signal.
StrategyPage.com 2009
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Leland: When I first read "a pressure switch in the seat to denote a person", I thought you wrote "detonate".
Requiring digital cameras and camera phones to make an audible click. Ann Althouse 2009
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With power already supplied, the only thing that’s needed to detonate is to complete the electrical circuit.
Mercy Falls William Kent Krueger 2005
Comments
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