What does dissipated mean?
"Dissipated" is an adjective with two main uses. Applied to people, it describes someone devoted to excessive pleasure — heavy drinking, gambling, or sensual indulgence — to the point of squandering their health, money, or good name: a dissipated aristocrat frittering away an inheritance. This sense carries a distinctly formal, disapproving tone. Applied to abstract or physical things, it means dispersed or scattered until gone: fears dissipate after reassurance, fog dissipates in sunlight, heat dissipates through ventilation. Both senses descend from the Latin dissipare, "to scatter," which explains the word's underlying image of something spread so thin that nothing remains. The adjective is most common today in literary and journalistic prose, while everyday speakers tend to use its verb root, "dissipate." Knowing "dissipated" is useful both for characterising a wasteful lifestyle with precision and for describing how intangible things — doubts, tensions, rumours — gradually vanish.
Given to excessive indulgence in pleasure, especially drinking or gambling, so as to waste one's health, money, or reputation.
"The novel's hero begins as a charming but thoroughly dissipated young man about town."
(Of a feeling, cloud, heat, or other thing) dispersed or driven away until it has disappeared.
"The morning mist had fully dissipated by the time we reached the summit."
A fortune built over a lifetime can be dissipated in a decade — the word's Latin root literally means 'to scatter', as if wealth and health were tossed to the winds.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of dissipated
"Dissipated" derives from the Latin verb dissipare (also written dissupare), meaning "to scatter or disperse," formed from dis- ("apart") plus a root related to supare, "to throw." It entered English via the past participle dissipatus in the early seventeenth century, first describing physical dispersal before acquiring its figurative sense of wasted substance and morals. Cognates include French dissipé and Italian dissipato, while English also borrowed the noun "dissipation" from the same Latin source.
How dissipated is actually used
When applied to people, 'dissipated' is formal and strongly disapproving, evoking Victorian moralising about drink and debauchery; modern writers more often reserve the verb form ('the tension dissipated') for neutral descriptions of things fading away.
Easily confused with dissipated
'Desperate' means feeling or showing hopeless urgency, while 'dissipated' describes wasteful indulgence or something scattered away; they merely resemble each other in sound.