filtrate

Etymology

The verb is borrowed from Medieval Latin filtrātus (“filtered”), the past participle of filtrō (“to filter”),^[2][3][4][5] which the American Heritage Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of English call New Latin;^[6][7] the Latin verb is from filtrum (“felt; filter”), the source of filter.^[6][7][8] Etymonline thinks the English verb was probably a back-formation from filtration, recorded from about 1600.^[8][5] The Medieval Latin noun is from Proto-West Germanic *filtiz, according to Etymonline, and is related to felt.^[8][1] The noun is probably borrowed from German Filtrat (1840 or earlier), formed from the Latin verb with the suffix -at and remodelled after -ate.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

To pass a liquid through a filter: 1639, in John Woodall's Surgeons Mate;^[5] Etymonline dates the verb to the 1610s,^[8] and the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English to the early 17th century.^[9][7]

Semantic evolution

The verb was used at first in medicine and chemistry, as a learned equivalent of filter.^[5][2] From 1682 to 1794 it could also mean to give out through pores without any sense of purifying; after 1686 it was also used intransitively of a liquid seeping through a porous medium.^[5] Johnson (1755) defined it as "to strain; to percolate; to filter", quoting Arbuthnot.^[10] The noun, the liquid that has passed through a filter, came in the 1840s from the language of chemistry,^[5][8][2] and the verb is now usually replaced by filter.^[11]

Timeline

• 1639 – verb, to pass a liquid through a filter.^[5]
• 1682 – verb, to give out through pores (obsolete by 1794).^[5]
• 1686 – verb, to pass through a filter, to percolate.^[5]
• 1843 – noun, a liquid that has passed through a filter.^[5] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the noun to about 1846.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A liquid or gas that has passed through a filter: The chemist tested the clear filtrate for lead.^[11][2][5]

Verb

1. To filter.^[2][11][5]
2. To pass through a filter; to percolate.^[5][9]

Word family

• filtratable
• filtration
• ultrafiltrate

Related words

• filter
• felt
• infiltrate

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
4. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins