lexicow

dissipate

/ˈdɪsɪpeɪt//ˈdɪsɪpeɪt/·verb
At first I can barely make out the hills for the white that lies over them — a thick, low cloud snagged on the field, soft at every edge, going nowhere. Then the light leans in. The white begins to thin and lift, tearing into slow patches that drift, stretch and grow paler the wider they spread. I keep watching one bank, expecting it to settle somewhere else; instead it simply gets thinner until there is nothing of it left, and the bare hills and the small pale sun stand in clean air, as though the cloud had never been.
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Definition

To dissipate is to scatter and fade until nothing is left: fog dissipates as the sun climbs, tension dissipates after an argument, energy dissipates as heat. Unlike disperse, where a thing spreads out but still exists somewhere, what dissipates loses itself completely — it thins into the air and is gone. From the Latin dissipare, 'to scatter', it can also mean to squander: a fortune may dissipate as surely as mist. Either way, something concentrated ends as nothing.

Examples

  • The morning mist dissipated as soon as the sun began to build up real heat.
  • Her anger dissipated almost as quickly as it had begun to surge.
  • Heat dissipates fast in thin mountain air, so the climbers' warmth did not linger.

Collocations

the fog dissipated·tension dissipated·dissipate energy·dissipate heat·dissipate a fortune

Synonyms

disperse·evaporate·vanish·scatter·fade

Antonyms

accumulate·gather·concentrate

See also

Word family

dissipation (noun)·dissipated (adjective)

In TOEFL & IELTS

Common in science writing — 'energy/heat dissipates' — and in describing emotions that fade, such as tension or anger. Keep the nuance against its near-synonyms: disperse spreads something out but it still exists, deplete is a supply used up, while dissipate is a fading to nothing. Note the adjective 'dissipated' can also mean dissolute (a dissipated lifestyle).