LUBRICATE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Lubricate

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verb

Lubricate v. t.

To make smooth or slippery; as, mucilaginous and saponaceous remedies lubricate the parts to which they are applied. "Supples, lubricates, and keeps in play, The various movements of this nice machine."

To apply a lubricant to, as oil or tallow.

Hence: To reduce social frictions or difficulties between people, thus making cooperation easier and joint action smoother.

To inebriate by supplying with alcoholic beverages. (slang)

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Etymology of 'Lubricate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Lubricate" Quotes from Famous Books

... thing in itself, but a most unreasonable request of an economy session, said the organization leaders. In fact, this hundred thousand dollars happened to be precisely the hundred thousand dollars they needed to lubricate "the organization," and discharge, by some choice new positions, a few honorable obligations ...

— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... wider and deeper the literary culture the more valuable a member of society the possessor will be. The lubricant of society in all its functions, whether of business or leisure, is sympathy, and a sufficient quantity, as it were, of sympathy to lubricate the complex mechanism of civilised life can only be supplied by a widespread knowledge of the best, and a great deal more than the best, of what has been and is being thought and said in the world. ...

— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

Words linked to "Lubricate" : make full, lubricator, be, alter, change, fill up