lixiviate

English

Etymology

Borrowed from a Medieval Latin lixīvio, lixīviātus, or formed from the root of lixīvium, lixīvia, from lixīvius (made into lye), from lixa (water, lye, ashes).

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /lɪkˈsɪvieɪt/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)

Verb

lixiviate (third-person singular simple present lixiviates, present participle lixiviating, simple past and past participle lixiviated)

  1. To separate (a substance) into soluble and insoluble components through percolation; to leach.
    • 1997, Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, →OCLC, pages 88–89:
      [] the Slaves are out in the Storm, doing their Owners’ Laundry, observing and reading each occurrence of Blood, Semen, Excrement, Saliva, Urine, Sweat, Road-Mud, dead Skin, and other such Data of Biography, whose pure form they practice Daily, before all is lixiviated ’neath Heaven.

Derived terms

Translations

Adjective

lixiviate (comparative more lixiviate, superlative most lixiviate)

  1. Of or relating to lye or lixivium; of the quality of alkaline salts.
  2. Impregnated with salts from wood ashes.
    • 1685, Robert Boyle, Short Memoirs for the Natural Experimental History of Mineral Waters:
      but we cou'd not, by this way, discern the least acidity in our arsenical solution, but rather a manifest sign of an urinous or lixiviate quality

Noun

lixiviate (plural lixiviates)

  1. leachate

Spanish

Verb

lixiviate

  1. second-person singular voseo imperative of lixiviar combined with te