rotate
/ˈɹoʊ.teɪt/verb, adjective
rotate is spelled R-O-T-A-T-E. The wrong spelling people search most is rorate: about 120 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 10 of all searches for the word. Rotate is a verb meaning “To spin, turn, or revolve”.
How many letters and syllables are in rotate?
| Letters | 6: R-O-T-A-T-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 3.8 times per million words; the 13,321st most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, rorate, about 120 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell rotate?
Rotate is spelled R-O-T-A-T-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 10 of the searches for rotate in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is rotate?
Rotate appears 3.8 times per million words in written English, the 13,321st 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 pronounce rotate?
- UK /ɹəʊˈteɪt/
- UK /ɹəˈteɪt/
- US /ˈɹoʊ.teɪt/
Rotate has 2 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: En-us-rotate.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of rotate
- rotates present, singular, he/she/it
- rotating participle, present
- rotated participle, past, singular, he/she/it, plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does rotate mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
verb
- 1
To spin, turn, or revolve.
He rotated in his chair to face me.
- 2
To advance through a sequence; to take turns.
The nurses' shifts rotate each week.
- 3
To lift the nose during takeoff, just prior to liftoff.
The aircraft rotates at sixty knots.
- 4
To spin, turn, or revolve something.
Rotate the dial to the left.
- 5
To advance something through a sequence; to allocate or deploy in turns.
- 6
To replace older materials or to place older materials in front of newer ones so that older ones get used first.
The supermarket rotates the stock daily so that old foods don't sit around.
- 7
To grow or plant (crops) in a certain order.
adjective
- 1
Having the parts spreading out like a wheel; wheel-shaped.
a rotate spicule or scale; a rotate corolla
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Rotate in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | tourner, rotationner, rotater , faire tourner , intervertir, permuter |
| German | sich drehen, rotieren |
| Portuguese | rotar, girar, rotacionar, rodar |
| Spanish | girar |
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 rotate come from?
Borrowed from Latin rotātus, perfect passive participle of rotō (“revolve”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from rota (“wheel”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).