PERPETRATE

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (verb)

Verb forms

Present simple: I / you / we / they perpetrate ... he / she / it perpetrates

Past simple: perpetrated

Past participle: perpetrated

-ing form: perpetrating

Sense 1

Meaning:

Perform an act, usually with a negative connotation

Example:

pull a bank robbery

Synonyms:

commit; perpetrate; pull

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Hypernyms (to "perpetrate" is one way to...):

act; move (perform an action, or work out or perform (an action))

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "perpetrate"):

make (carry out or commit)

recommit (commit once again, as of a crime)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

perpetration (the act of committing a crime)

perpetrator (someone who perpetrates wrongdoing)

Credits

Context examples:

There she sat, staid and taciturn-looking, as usual, in her brown stuff gown, her check apron, white handkerchief, and cap. She was intent on her work, in which her whole thoughts seemed absorbed: on her hard forehead, and in her commonplace features, was nothing either of the paleness or desperation one would have expected to see marking the countenance of a woman who had attempted murder, and whose intended victim had followed her last night to her lair, and (as I believed), charged her with the crime she wished to perpetrate.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Woven into her being was the memory of countless crimes he and his had perpetrated against her ancestry.