dissipate
- 01 C1 Advanced
to waste something, especially money or time, on things that are not important.
to squander or expend wastefully. Typically applied to inherited wealth, resources, or opportunities.
Simple“He dissipated his small fortune on expensive cars and luxury holidays.”
In context“The heir dissipated the family's substantial estate within a decade, leaving his descendants with nothing but debt.”
UsageTransitive; requires a direct object representing the resource being wasted.
Teacher's tipThis sense is more formal than 'waste' and implies a lack of discipline.
- 02 C1 Advanced
to lose energy by turning it into heat.
to cause energy to be lost through its conversion into a non-useful form, such as heat.
Simple“The car's brakes dissipate energy as heat when you slow down quickly.”
In context“Engineers designed the new processor with advanced cooling systems to dissipate the heat generated during high-performance tasks.”
UsageCommonly used in physics and engineering contexts regarding heat or electricity.
“Additionally, NASA's InSight mission had previously discovered that seismic waves dissipate more quickly in the south, which could be explained if the region were hotter.”
“In this article, we discuss the technical challenges of building an orbital data center constellation: launching all of it, dissipating heat in space, dealing with radiation, and addressing latency issues in orbit.”
The verb is first attested in 1425, in Middle English, the adjective from 1606 to 1765; from Middle English dissipaten, from Latin dissipātus, perfect passive participle of dissipō (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), also written dissupō (“to scatter, disperse, demolish, destroy, squander, dissipate”), from dis- (“apart”) + supō (“to throw”). Doublet of dissipe (“to dissipate”), now obsolete.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.