Concentrate

How to spell concentrate

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce concentrate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does concentrate mean?

1. verbTo direct all of your attention or effort towards one thing.
2. verbTo make a liquid or solution stronger or denser by removing water or other diluting material.
3. nounA substance made by removing water or diluting material, usually meant to be mixed with liquid before use.

Concentrate in a sentence

• verb

  The constant noise from the street made it hard to concentrate on the report.

• verb

  The factory uses heat to concentrate the fruit juice before it is frozen.

• noun

  You dilute the orange concentrate with four parts water before serving.

• verb

  She asked the team to concentrate on finishing the budget before the deadline.

• verb

  Boiling the stock helps to concentrate the flavour into a smaller amount of liquid.

• noun

  The tomato concentrate comes in a small tin and is very thick.

Where does concentrate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin com-, meaning 'together', joined to centrum, meaning 'centre' or 'middle point'. Centrum itself was borrowed by Latin from the Greek kentron, which first meant a sharp point or the fixed leg of a compass that a circle is drawn around, and so came to mean the centre itself. The verb was assembled in the 1600s, partly modelled on the French concentrer, with the literal idea of drawing or bringing things 'together towards a common centre'. From that physical sense of gathering into one point grew both the mental meaning, focusing your attention on a single thing, and the chemical meaning, making a solution denser by removing water. The spelling holds onto the centr- of 'centre' and 'central', which is a useful reminder that the middle of the word is the same root you already know.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• centr (centre/middle point)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)