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Glite Dictionary
🥣 To soak soft 💀 To weaken
to macerate

to macerate

9.5
To make a person or animal very thin and weak by not eating enough
  • verb
  • /ˈmæsəˌreɪt/
  • Archaic
translation icon : emaciar
  • After weeks of illness, he looked macerated and weak from lack of nourishment.

Examples

  • The plant's leaves became macerated due to lack of water, leaving it fragile.

  • This painful condition is the consequence of a secondary infection of macerated skin and subcutaneous tissues of the external auditory canal.

    Academic text (2004)

  • The brain tissue was macerated and removed using forceps and cotton, and the cranial cavity was washed with a jet of water.

    Academic text (2014)

  • But even with her hair like that and her face already marked with deep creases, and in her plain gingham dress that hung beltless on her macerated frame, still the sight of her at that age could somehow call up images of girls that my mind had likened to her in the summers of 1933 and '34.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • During the famine, many survivors appeared macerated, suffering from severe malnutrition.

Synonyms

to starve
vsto macerate
134 3.0

To stop someone from eating so they become very hungry

describes resulting thinness rather than the act of withholding food
to emaciate
vsto macerate
3 8.9

To make someone very thin and weak because of illness or lack of food

focuses on thinness caused by prolonged wasting or starvation

Antonyms

to strengthen
327 3.0

To make muscles, relationships, or groups stronger

to nourish
49 3.2

To give food and care so a person, animal, or plant grows and stays healthy

How Thin

to emaciate
3 8.9
to macerate
  • Archaic
9.5
to weaken
305 2.8

Surface Forms

macerate infinitive
macerated past
macerated past participle
macerating present participle
macerates third person singular

Morphology

macerate = macer + ate

Formally built from the combining form 'macer' + the verb-forming suffix '-ate', but 'macer' is not a standalone English word and '-ate' is not transparently interpreted by average learners, so the meaning cannot be reliably derived.

Etymology

Macerate is also related to the Latin root macer, meaning 'thin', and it is the same root as emaciate ('make very thin'). So in a different sense, to macerate can mean to waste away or make someone or something weak and thin.