gravate

Gravate is an English verb that is extremely rarely attested in modern usage. When it appears, it is generally understood to mean to burden or to cause something to become heavy, i.e., to weigh down. Because of its scarcity, gravate is often treated as archaic, obsolete, or a nonce word rather than a standard part of the vocabulary.

Etymology and form. The word is typically traced to the Latin gravāre, meaning to make heavy or burdensome, from gravis meaning heavy. In English, gravate would follow the common -ate verb formation pattern, yielding gravates in the present tense and gravated in the past tense. The form and meaning thus resemble other English -ate verbs built from a Latin root indicating causation or transformation. However, due to its rarity, gravate does not have a widely standardized or widely cited set of usages in contemporary dictionaries.

Usage and notes. Because gravate is seldom used, it is not common in contemporary writing and is more likely to be encountered in historical texts, translations, or as a deliberate stylistic choice. In practice, writers who intend to express the idea of making something heavy or burdensome frequently choose more common verbs such as burden, weigh down, or make heavy, or they use related terms such as gravitate, depending on the intended nuance. Some discussions of gravate treat it as an obsolete or marginal term whose precise meaning can vary by text and period.

See also. Gravitate, gravity, burden, weigh down, heavy, etymology of Latin gravis.

In summary, gravate is a marginal English verb with the basic sense of making something heavy or burdensome, best treated as obscure and largely historical rather than part of standard modern usage.