overwordExplorer
ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

marinate.

To allow a sauce or flavoring mixture to absorb into something; to steep or soak something in a marinade to flavor or prepare it for cooking.

8 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈmæɹɪneɪt/
  1. To allow a sauce or flavoring mixture to absorb into something; to steep or soak something in a marinade to flavor or prepare it for cooking.

    ergative · transitive
    You'll get a better flavour from the chicken if you marinate it first.
    After the chicken has marinated for two hours, discard the remaining marinade.
  2. To allow a substance to be absobed into the hair or scalp.

    ambitransitive
  3. Of a substance, to absorb into the hair or scalp.

    ambitransitive
  4. Of ideas or feelings, to mentally develop over time.

    intransitive
  5. Especially of a haircut, to settle in and for one to get used to it.

    figuratively · informal
    It's not a bad haircut! You just got to let it marinate!
Where this word comes from

First attested in 1645; adapted from either French mariner or the earlier attested Italian marinare (“to pickle, marinate”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from Late Latin marina (“brine, salt water”), short for aqua marina (“sea water”), from Latin marinus (“marine, of the sea”), from Latin mare (“the sea”) from Proto-Indo-European *móri (“the sea”).

adj/ˈmæɹɪneɪt/
  1. Marinated.

    not-comparable · rare
Where this word comes from

First attested in 1645; adapted from either French mariner or the earlier attested Italian marinare (“to pickle, marinate”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from Late Latin marina (“brine, salt water”), short for aqua marina (“sea water”), from Latin marinus (“marine, of the sea”), from Latin mare (“the sea”) from Proto-Indo-European *móri (“the sea”).

FROM WORD TO NAME

Try it on your idea.

marinate has 8 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.

marinate studiomarinate workshello, marinate

These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.

Explore the name generator

A word with a source.

Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.