defibrillate
/diːˈfɪbɹɪleɪt/verb
defibrillate is a verb meaning “To stop the fibrillation of the heart in order to restore normal contractions, especially by the use of an electric shock” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled D-E-F-I-B-R-I-L-L-A-T-E, and it appears about once in every 93 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does defibrillate mean?
verb
- 1
To stop the fibrillation of the heart in order to restore normal contractions, especially by the use of an electric shock.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce defibrillate?
- UK /diːˈfɪbɹɪleɪt/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-defibrillate.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of defibrillate
- defibrillates present, singular, he/she/it
- defibrillating participle, present
- defibrillated participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is defibrillate?
Defibrillate appears about once in every 93 million words in written English, the 309,272nd 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).
Defibrillate in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense to stop cardiac fibrillation:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | défibriller |
| German | defibrillieren |
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 defibrillate come from?
From de- + fibrillate.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).