illuminate

Other forms of illuminate

past tense

illuminated·

present participle

illuminating·

third person

illuminates·

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 illuminate

What does illuminate mean?

illuminate means "make lighter or brighter". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in illuminate?

illuminate has 4 syllables: il-lu-mi-nate. The stress falls on "lu". In IPA it is /ˌɪˈlumɪnɪt/.

What is another word for illuminate?

Close synonyms include light, illume, illumine, light up, clear. 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 illuminate a common word?

illuminate is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.