peculate

Questions about peculate

What does peculate mean?

peculate means "appropriate (as property entrusted to one's care) fraudulently to one's own use".

How many syllables are in peculate?

peculate has 3 syllables and divides as pe-cu-late under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for peculate?

Close synonyms include embezzle, defalcate, misappropriate, malversate. 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 peculate a common word?

peculate 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.