English edit

Etymology edit

Borrowed from a Medieval Latin lixivio, lixiviatus, or formed from the root of lixivium, lixivia, from lixivius (made into lye), from lix (ashes, lye).

Pronunciation edit

  • IPA(key): /lɪkˈsɪvieɪt/
  • (file)

Verb edit

lixiviate (third-person singular simple present lixiviates, present participle lixiviating, simple past and past participle lixiviated)

  1. To separate (a substance) into soluble and insoluble components through percolation; to leach.
    • 1997, Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, →OCLC, pages 88–89:
      [] the Slaves are out in the Storm, doing their Owners’ Laundry, observing and reading each occurrence of Blood, Semen, Excrement, Saliva, Urine, Sweat, Road-Mud, dead Skin, and other such Data of Biography, whose pure form they practice Daily, before all is lixiviated ’neath Heaven.

Translations edit

Adjective edit

lixiviate (comparative more lixiviate, superlative most lixiviate)

  1. Of or relating to lye or lixivium; of the quality of alkaline salts.
  2. Impregnated with salts from wood ashes.
    • 1685, Robert Boyle, Short Memoirs for the Natural Experimental History of Mineral Waters:
      but we cou'd not, by this way, discern the least acidity in our arsenical solution, but rather a manifest sign of an urinous or lixiviate quality

Noun edit

lixiviate (plural lixiviates)

  1. leachate

Spanish edit

Verb edit

lixiviate

  1. second-person singular voseo imperative of lixiviar combined with te