verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To add one or more protons to (a molecule, ion or radical). transitive

   "protonate the carbonyl group"

2. 2
   To acquire an additional proton. intransitive

Synonyms

All synonyms

protonize

Etymology

From proton + -ate (verb-forming suffix).

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