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.

Translations

To separate (a substance)

Bulgarian: излугвам (izlugvam) Czech: loužit impf

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