potentiate
verb
potentiate is a verb meaning “To endow with power” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-O-T-E-N-T-I-A-T-E, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does potentiate mean?
verb
- 1
To endow with power.
- 2
To enhance.
- 3
To increase the potency (of a drug or biochemical agent).
These antidepressants potentiate the analgesic action of opiates.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of potentiate
- potentiates present, singular, he/she/it
- potentiating participle, present
- potentiated participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is potentiate?
Potentiate appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 109,062nd 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).
Potentiate in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense (''transitive''):
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| Spanish | potenciar, potencializar |
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 potentiate come from?
From potent + -i- + -ate (verb-forming suffix), modelled after German potenzieren.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).