communicate

Formscommunicates, communicating, communicated

1. 1
   verbintransitive

   To express or exchange ideas and information with others, whether through words or other signs.

   Dolphins communicate using a complex range of clicks and whistles.

   The colleagues communicated mostly through email during the pandemic.

   Similartalk, correspond, converse, interact, speak

   Note

   This is the verb without an object, where the exchange itself is the point. People communicate with each other, or communicate with sign language. The usual partner is with, naming either the other party or the means. Compare the transitive "tell" sense, which needs a message as its object: you communicate news, but you communicate with a friend.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To pass on information or knowledge to someone; to make something known or tell it.

   The pilot communicated the flight delay to passengers over the intercom.

   Managers must communicate company decisions clearly to their teams.

   Similarconvey, relay, impart, announce, transmit

   Oppositewithhold, conceal

   Note

   Latin is where the word's double life begins. Commūnicāre meant both "impart" and "make common," from commūnis, "common." English kept both halves, which is why one verb covers telling and sharing. Here it is transitive. The message is the object and the hearer follows to: communicate the decision to the team. French communiquer is a cousin, and an older borrowing from French, communique, has dropped out of English.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To pass a disease on to another person, animal, or other living thing.

   Ticks can communicate Lyme disease to both pets and people.

   Travelers unknowingly communicated the disease to several distant cities.

   Similartransmit, spread, carry

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To pass on or transmit something intangible (such as heat, motion, or a quality) to another person or thing.

   Like a row of train cars passing a jolt from one to the next when the engine starts.

   Vibrating strings communicate their energy to the surrounding air.

   A blow to one end of the rod communicates the shock along its whole length.

   Similartransmit, transfer, convey, impart

   Note

   Anything that can be passed on without a physical handover fits here: motion carried through a crank, or a shock carried along a rod. Jeremy Taylor, in 1660, uses it of God, who "communicates his blessing and holy influences" wherever he is worshipped. Mechanics and devotion share one verb because both describe giving a share of something intangible, and the disease sense applies the same idea to infection.

5. 5
   verbintransitive

   To be connected to another room, vessel, or space by means of an opening or channel.

   The two chambers communicate through a narrow channel cut into the rock.

   In the old house, the study communicated directly with the library.

   Similarconnect, join, link

   Note

   The builder's use of the verb: rooms, courts and vessels communicate when a door, window or passage joins them. The second space always follows with. The participle often works like an adjective, as in Dickens's Great Expectations: "a door in the kitchen, communicating with the forge." Ronald M. Burrows (1907) has staircases letting rooms in Crete "communicate with the Central Court."

6. 6
   verbintransitive

   To take Holy Communion, receiving the bread and wine when the Eucharist is celebrated.

   Only baptized members may communicate at this church's altar.

   The faithful communicated quietly as the choir sang.

   Similarcommune

   Note

   Church usage keeps the verb intransitive. A worshipper simply communicates, with no object, often with a place or occasion attached. John Buchan's bairn "had communicated in Christ's kirk," and in Keith Thomas's history the better sort "might communicate on a separate day." Once the verb takes a person as its object, the meaning flips to giving the sacrament, so the grammar tells you who is receiving.

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To administer the Holy Communion to someone by giving them the consecrated bread and wine.

   The bishop communicated each candidate following the confirmation rite.

   In an emergency, a layperson may communicate the dying.

   Note

   Here the church or its minister is the subject and the recipient is the object: "she may communicate him." Jeremy Taylor, writing in 1660, sets this beside pronouncing a reformed penitent pardoned. In his usage, admitting someone to the sacrament reads almost as a verdict on their repentance. It is an easy construction to misread in older religious prose, where it can look like an act of telling.

Showing meanings only. Show all 9