What does "formate" mean?

Any salt or ester of formic acid.

What is a synonym for "formate"?

Common synonyms include: draw up, draw up, methanoate.

How do you pronounce "formate"?

Pronounced //ˈfɔː(ɹ)meɪt//.

Formate

//ˈfɔː(ɹ)meɪt// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
Any salt or ester of formic acid.
"But most likely my judgement was distorted by my contempt for his acting the young buck [...] for ever waxing his moustaches and loading himself with medicaments supposed to replace the failing sap of youth, glycerophosphates, formates, nux vomica, yohimba, damiana."

Verb

1
To assemble flying aircraft into formation; to fly in formation.
"Tiger Moths from the Reserve Flying Schools at Rochester and Cambridge competed with each other at formating in the gusty conditions, Rochester just winning."

Synonyms

All synonyms

draw up draw up methanoate

Example

More examples

"But most likely my judgement was distorted by my contempt for his acting the young buck [...] for ever waxing his moustaches and loading himself with medicaments supposed to replace the failing sap of youth, glycerophosphates, formates, nux vomica, yohimba, damiana."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From formic + -ate (“salt or ester”).

Etymology 2

Back-formation from formation on the basis of -ate (verb-forming suffix).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.