chlorinate
/ˈklɒ.ɹɪ.neɪt/verb
chlorinate is a verb meaning “To add chlorine to (something, especially water, to purify it; or an auriferous substance, to extract gold from it)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-H-L-O-R-I-N-A-T-E and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 55 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does chlorinate mean?
verb
- 1
To add chlorine to (something, especially water, to purify it; or an auriferous substance, to extract gold from it).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce chlorinate?
- UK /ˈklɒ.ɹɪ.neɪt/
Chlorinate has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-chlorinate.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of chlorinate
- chlorinates present, singular, he/she/it
- chlorinating participle, present
- chlorinated participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is chlorinate?
Chlorinate appears about once in every 55 million words in written English, the 231,291st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Chlorinate in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense to add chlorine to:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does chlorinate come from?
From chlorine + -ate.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).