Home UK English elongate

Meaning of elongate in English:

elongate

Pronunciation /ˈiːlɒŋɡeɪt/

See synonyms for elongate

Translate elongate into Spanish

verb

[with object]

  • 1Make (something) longer, especially unusually so in relation to its width.

    ‘an artist known for elongating the human figures in his paintings’
    • ‘hold that stretch, elongating the spine from the base to the hips’
    • ‘Their flat, scaleless bellies and slender, elongated bodies facilitate the process.’
    • ‘The figures of his angels are elongated, with wings stretched upward as if they were sculpted by the Gothic masters.’
    • ‘Each is comprised of two or three elongated strips of material stretching from above eye level and continuing near the ground.’
    • ‘These lesions were characterized by a monomorphous pattern of slender, elongated spindle cells in a sclerotic stroma.’
    • ‘In other anthropomorphic designs the fill is constituted by straight horizontal and vertical lines and the bodies are elongated and rectangular.’
    • ‘The body is elongated to emphasise a twisted head and an outstretched forceful arm.’
    • ‘With the Knights title-topping the table with two games still to play and City unbeaten after three starts to the Conference, sports pages are no longer the preserve of faces elongated by misery and despair.’
    • ‘It had a rack of quad headlights fitted at the tip of an even more generously elongated bonnet, a classy-as-signet-rings plastic spoiler on the boot lid, and a smaller, sportier steering wheel.’
    • ‘They are supposed to revolve around the theme Nature and Man but some of them are so esoteric, like the busts of four elongated figures sitting around a candle, that we could not relate them to the theme.’
    • ‘The players kept looking across at each other to ensure that the diamond shape was holding and hadn't dissolved into a sort of twisted parallelogram, or a very, very, elongated trapezoid.’
    • ‘He came to be influenced in this latter pursuit by primitive forms, which rhymed felicitously with those elongated features found in much of his portraiture.’
    • ‘These elongated streetcars with their accordion-like midsection are able to hold a maximum of 205 passengers.’
    • ‘The arcs, which look like a pale, elongated rainbow that doesn't quite meet in the middle, symbolize Arabic architecture.’
    • ‘Rows of fine, tall terraces surround elongated grassy squares, with paths running through and around them.’
    • ‘Her neck is elongated beyond the bounds of anatomical correctness - an attribute of young, innocent female beauty in the artistic vocabulary of the time.’
    • ‘His neck was elongated with a black posture collar.’
    • ‘My steps quickened, my stride elongating to keep myself from the echoing sound of my name.’
    • ‘The floor plan of the house forms a horseshoe with the flat end pointing north and the two wings south, the western wing elongated to accommodate the apartment.’
    • ‘And so, as K takes up the camera on my behalf, my face miraculously elongates itself.’
    • ‘Snaps appear on the hip of an A-line skirt, or straight down both sides of the front panel of a skirt to elongate or shorten the slit.’
    lengthen, stretch out, make longer, extend, broaden, widen, enlarge
    View synonyms
    1. 1.1Biology no object Become longer.
      ‘the pup's globular body slowly elongates’
      • ‘In contrast to aerobic germination where the radicle emerged first and both root and shoot growth were observed, only the shoot emerged and elongated during the entire anaerobic incubation period.’
      • ‘For example, as the deposition of lignins limits plant cell wall extension, lignification must be regulated so that it occurs after a cell has elongated so as not to impinge on plant growth.’
      • ‘In several cases the pollen tubes emerged and elongated rapidly, then burst, with the cytoplasm streaming out of the burst tip.’
      • ‘These siliques elongated but did not develop seeds.’
      • ‘At this point, 60% of the cells had large buds that continued to elongate with prolonged incubation.’

adjective

Biology

  • Long in relation to width; elongated.

    ‘elongate fishes’
    • ‘One of the most prominent characteristics of early vertebrates is the elongate caudal fin bearing fin rays.’
    • ‘The forelimbs are elongate and are positioned ventrally.’
    • ‘Fertile fronds have clusters of elongate sporangia that partially replace pinnules.’
    • ‘Conodonts were mostly small, elongate, eel-shaped marine animals that inhabited a variety of environments in Paleozoic and Triassic seas.’
    • ‘The medial process is very elongate proximally and extends well posterior of the articular surface of the head.’

Origin

Late Middle English (in the sense ‘move away’): from late Latin elongat- ‘placed at a distance’, from the verb elongare, from Latin e- (variant of ex-) ‘away’ + longe ‘far off’, longus ‘long’.