expectorate

Other forms of expectorate

past tense

expectorated·

present participle

expectorating·

third person

expectorates·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about expectorate

What does expectorate mean?

expectorate means "clear out the chest and lungs". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in expectorate?

expectorate has 4 syllables: ex-pec-to-rate. The stress falls on "pec".

What is another word for expectorate?

Close synonyms include clear out, drive out, cough up, cough out, spit up. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is expectorate a common word?

expectorate is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.