Castrate
noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A castrated man; a eunuch.
"The castrate voice had a strange power not duplicated by soprano or countertenor."
- 2 a man who has been castrated and is incapable of reproduction wordnet
- 1 To remove the testicles of a person or animal. transitive
"If the priests of Diana of Ephesus castrated themselves and offered their genitals on the altar, it was because the phallus was the symbol of the dying body."
- 2 remove the ovaries of wordnet
- 3 To remove the ovaries and/or uterus of an animal. transitive, uncommon
- 4 remove the testicles of a male animal wordnet
- 5 To take something from; to render imperfect or ineffectual. figuratively, transitive
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- 6 edit by omitting or modifying parts considered indelicate wordnet
- 7 deprive of strength or vigor wordnet
Example
More examples"Pet owners sometimes castrate male animals to make them more docile."
Etymology
Likely from an unattested sense of Middle English castrat (“(adjective) castrated; (noun) a castrated animal”), substantivized borrowing of Latin castrātus, perfect passive participle of castrō (“to prune, amputate, castrate”), see -ate (noun-forming suffix)).
Borrowed from Latin castrātus, perfect passive participle of Latin castrō, see -ate (verb-forming suffix). Displaced native geld in its broader sense.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.