criminate
"criminate" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“criminate” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To accuse (someone) of a crime; to incriminate.
Corpus desk
Index EN-criminate · criminate · English
criminate · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "C" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | criminate |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “criminate” in English
Rare enough to double-check
criminate is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
criminate has no tracked misspelling variants, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: First attested circa 1591; borrowed from Latin crīminātus, perfect passive participle of crīminō, see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix). The correct English form is criminate, spelled C-R-I-M-I-N-A-T-E.
Definition
- 1To accuse (someone) of a crime; to incriminate.
- 2To rebuke or censure (someone).
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how criminate appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
‘I am now under confinement in this place for debt; but if you obtain […] a condition from the judge that what I reveal shall not criminate myself, I will make discoveries that shall confound that same Marquis […].’
In Germany, I had heard little of this terrible gang, and I had paid no greater heed to the stories related once or twice about them in Carlsruhe than one does to tales about ogres. But here in their very haunts, I learnt the full amount of the terror they inspired. No one would be legally responsible for any evidence criminating the murderer.
Etymology
First attested circa 1591; borrowed from Latin crīminātus, perfect passive participle of crīminō, see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix).
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.