medicate
/ˈmɛdɪkeɪt/verb
medicate is a verb meaning “To prescribe or administer medication to” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled M-E-D-I-C-A-T-E and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 3 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does medicate mean?
verb
- 1
To prescribe or administer medication to.
- 2
To have a medicinal or healing effect on a person, body part, or ailment; to act on.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce medicate?
- /ˈmɛdɪkeɪt/
Medicate 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-medicate.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of medicate
- medicates present, singular, he/she/it
- medicating participle, present
- medicated participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is medicate?
Medicate appears about once in every 3 million words in written English, the 54,192nd 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).
How do you abbreviate medicate?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of medicate: med.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Medicate in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense administer medication:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | verschreiben, medizieren, medizinisch behandeln |
| Portuguese | medicar |
| Spanish | medicar, medicinar |
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 medicate come from?
From Latin medicō (“heal, cure”) + English -ate (verb-forming suffix).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).