Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To rub, crush, grind, or pound into fine particles or a powder; pulverize.
- noun A triturated substance, especially a powdered drug.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To rub, grind, or bruise; specifically, to grind to a powder.
- In physiology, to grind with the grinders; masticate with the molar teeth; chew to a pulp.
- noun A form of medicine in which an active substance has been thoroughly powdered and mixed by rubbing up with sugar of milk.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To rub, grind, bruise, or thrash.
- transitive verb To rub or grind to a very fine or impalpable powder; to pulverize and comminute thoroughly.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To
grind to a finepowder , topulverize . - verb To mix two solid reactants by repeated grinding and stirring.
- verb To break up biological tissue into individual cells via passage through a narrow opening such as a hypodermic needle.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word triturate.
Examples
-
Assail me and you irrevocably ravish your own integrity, triturate your own sculpted truths.
-
Take three cantharides, and removing their head, feet, and wings, triturate their bodies in three cupfuls (cyathi) of water, and when the person who has drunk the draught complains of pain, let him have hot fomentations applied.
-
Take one drachm of ebeny and nine oboli of burnt copper, rub them upon a whetstone, add three oboli of saffron; triturate all these things reduced to a fine powder, pour in an Attic hemina of sweet wine, and then place in the sun and cover up; when sufficiently digested, use it.
-
Having cut some bulbs or squill, boil in water, and when well boiled, throw this away, and having poured in more water, boil until it appear to the touch soft and well-boiled; then triturate finely and mix roasted cumin, and white sesames, and young almonds pounded in honey, form into an electuary and give; and afterwards sweet wine.
-
A flat, smooth, oval slab, weighing about fifteen pounds, and a stone roller six inches in diameter, worked with both hands, and the weight of the body kneeling ungracefully upon it on “all fours,” are used to triturate the holcus grain.
-
Empty the sample of soil into the mortar and triturate thoroughly.
-
Mucilage one ounce; triturate it with Levigated Indigo and Lamp Black q.s. to give it a good color.
One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed C. A. Bogardus
-
-- Six parts Persian Blue, one quart Oxalic Acid; triturate with little Water to smoothe paste, add Gum Arabic and the necessary quantity of Water.
One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed C. A. Bogardus
-
Melt together over a water bath white wax and spermaceti each one ounce, camphor two ounces, sweet almond oil, one pound, then triturate until the mixture has become homogeneous, and allow one pound of rose-water to flow in slowly during the operation.
The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) The Whole Comprising a Comprehensive Cyclopedia of Information for the Home Mrs. F.L. Gillette
-
And to say the truth, remembering that Dr. Swinnerton himself never appeared to triturate or decoct or do anything else with the mysterious herbs, our old friend was inclined to imagine the weighty commendation of their virtues to have been the idly solemn utterance of mental aberration at the hour of death.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 Various
chained_bear commented on the word triturate
Usage note on triturated.
March 5, 2008
reesetee commented on the word triturate
(verb used with object) 1. to reduce to fine particles or powder by rubbing, grinding, bruising, or the like; pulverize.
(noun) 2. a triturated substance.
March 6, 2008
knitandpurl commented on the word triturate
"They're triturating each other."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 100 of the NYRB paperback
November 6, 2010