Dehydrated

How to spell dehydrated

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce dehydrated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dehydrated mean?

1. adjectiveHaving lost a large amount of water or fluid, leaving something dried out or a person unwell.
2. verbRemoved the water from something, or lost a large amount of body fluid (past tense of dehydrate).

Dehydrated in a sentence

• adjective

  After the long hike in the heat she felt weak and badly dehydrated.

• verb

  The gentle heat of the oven slowly dehydrated the sliced tomatoes overnight.

• adjective

  The recipe calls for a handful of dehydrated apricots and raisins.

• verb

  Skipping water all day in the sun quickly dehydrated the marathon runners.

Where does dehydrated come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is built from Greek and Latin parts that together describe taking water away. The core is the Greek hydor, meaning 'water', the same root that gives us 'hydrant', 'hydrogen', and 'hydraulic'. To this was added the Latin prefix de-, which carries the sense of removal or reversal, and the verb-forming ending -ate. The verb 'dehydrate' emerged in scientific and chemical writing in the nineteenth century, first describing the laboratory removal of water from a compound, and then spreading to everyday use for drying food and for the medical state of a body that has lost too much fluid. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the 'hy' carries a y where many writers expect an i, because the Greek hydor was Latinised with that letter, and the silent-feeling first syllable can blur into 'de-hi'.

How the word is built

• de- (remove, away)
• hydr (water, from Greek hydor)
• -ate (verb-forming)
• -ed (past tense / participle)