federate

1 of 2

adjective

fed·​er·​ate ˈfe-d(ə-)rət 

: united in an alliance or federation : federated

federate

2 of 2

verb

fed·​er·​ate ˈfe-də-ˌrāt 

federated; federating

transitive verb

: to join in a federation

Synonyms

Verb

• ally
• associate
• band (together)
• club
• coalesce
• cohere
• confederate
• conjoin
• cooperate
• league
• unite

Examples of federate in a Sentence

Verb

The independent provinces were federated to form a nation.

in the years following World War II, the U.S. and the nations of western Europe made the decision to federate as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Recent Examples on the Web

Verb

Key steps include: Building A Robust Data Ecosystem Determining the optimal data ecosystem architecture, whether centralized or federated, involves balancing coordination with domain-specific needs, governance and scalability to maximize data value. —Tina Chakrabarty, Forbes, 5 Mar. 2025

The nonprofit Ebell Club was chartered and federated on March 9, 1984, and since that time members have raised more than $300,000 for numerous philanthropies both within the community, as well as national organizations. —Sharon Hlapcich, Orange County Register, 20 Feb. 2025

Knowledge graphs can also federate multiple databases together, natively bringing together disparate data. —Brian Platz, Forbes, 21 Nov. 2024

There are also cases where the management and execution of that can be highly federated, and there might be multiple people. —Megan Poinski, Forbes, 3 Oct. 2024

Out with the old broken model, in with the New A fundamental shift away from centralized and federated identity systems is long overdue. —Alastair Johnson, Forbes, 12 Sep. 2024

And then that means if a lot of people are federating and self-hosting, that ecosystem can just shift around piece by piece to the services that haven’t shut down their APIs and that haven’t let users feel betrayed. —Nilay Patel, The Verge, 25 Mar. 2024

Instead of the audio for voice posts, Meta considered federating text transcripts, but ultimately decided to stick with sharing the audio. —Reece Rogers, WIRED, 2 Feb. 2024

Keep Them Off Social Media Pew did not ask about such X alternatives as Meta’s Threads—which has seen downloads increase as X’s have waned—the open-source and federated Mastodon and the decentralized platform Bluesky. —Rob Pegoraro, PCMAG, 31 Jan. 2024

Word History

Etymology

Adjective

Latin foederatus, from foeder-, foedus

First Known Use

Adjective

1672, in the meaning defined above

Verb

1580, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for federate

• abdicate
• abrogate
• acetate
• activate
• actuate
• adsorbate
• aggravate
• agitate
• alginate
• alienate
• allocate
• amputate

Kids Definition

federate

verb

fed·​er·​ate

ˈfed-ə-ˌrāt

federated; federating

: to join in a federation