What does cavitate mean?
To cavitate means to form cavities — most commonly, vapor-filled bubbles that arise within a liquid when its local pressure falls below its vapor pressure. This phenomenon occurs around rapidly spinning propellers and inside pumps, where collapsing bubbles can erode even hardened metal surfaces, producing noise, vibration, and loss of performance. Engineers work hard to prevent machinery from cavitating by maintaining adequate inlet pressure. The word also appears in medical and scientific contexts, where tissues or materials may be said to cavitate when they develop internal hollow spaces, as in certain lung lesions or under focused ultrasound. A technical term drawn from the Latin 'cavus' meaning hollow, cavitate belongs mainly to the vocabulary of engineers, physicists, and clinicians, though its vivid imagery makes it memorable well beyond those fields.
verbTo form cavities or vapor-filled bubbles in a liquid, typically as a result of rapid pressure changes; in medicine or materials science, to develop hollow spaces within a tissue or solid.
- To form vapor-filled bubbles in a liquid due to local pressure dropping below the liquid's vapor pressure (chiefly of pumps, propellers, and other hydraulic machinery).
- To develop hollow spaces or voids within a solid material or biological tissue.
"The pump impeller began to cavitate after the intake pressure dropped below the manufacturer's threshold."
"If the suction line is starved, the pump will cavitate and lose efficiency almost immediately."
"The ultrasound wave was tuned so that the microscopic droplets would cavitate inside the tumor."
When a ship's propeller spins fast enough, the water around it doesn't just churn — it literally tears open into bubbles of vacuum, and those collapsing bubbles can pit solid metal.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cavitate
The verb cavitate derives from the Latin 'cavus', meaning hollow, combined with the verbal suffix '-ate'. It arose alongside the noun 'cavitation', which entered English in the late 19th century in the context of propeller research before giving rise to the back-formed verb. It shares its root with 'cave', 'cavern', 'cavity', and 'excavate', all of which trace back to the same Latin source for a hollow space.
Related word forms
How cavitate is actually used
Technical register — used chiefly in fluid mechanics, engineering, and medical imaging contexts. In everyday speech it is rare; lay readers are more likely to encounter the related noun 'cavitation'. The intransitive use ('the pump cavitates') is standard.
Easily confused with cavitate
A 'cavity' is the noun for a hollow space itself (as in a dental cavity), while 'cavitate' is the verb describing the process of forming such hollows or bubbles.
A 'caveat' is a warning or qualifying statement, unrelated in meaning to 'cavitate', which describes bubble or void formation.