Word of the Day

: July 12, 2018

cerebrate

verb SAIR-uh-brayt

What It Means

: to use the mind : think

cerebrate in Context

"You can't cerebrate over what you can't see, which therefore becomes an object of loathing and mistrust." — Howard Portnoy, Examiner.com, 25 June 2012

"I can never decide if Derek is incredibly shallow or so deep that he's cerebrating on two levels at once and I'm privy only to the superficial one." — Susan B. Johnson, Spirit Willing, 2006

Did You Know?

When you think of the human brain, you might think of the cerebrum, the large, fissured upper portion of the brain that is recognized as the neural control center for thought and sensory perception. In 1853, Dr. William Carpenter thought of the cerebrum when he coined "unconscious cerebration," a term describing the mental process by which people seem to do the right thing or come up with the right answer without conscious effort. People thought enough of Carpenter's coinage to use it as the basis of cerebrate, though the verb refers to active thinking rather than subconscious processing. Cerebrate, cerebrum, and the related adjective cerebral all derive from the Latin word for "brain," which is cerebrum.