prostrate. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

prostrate

SYLLABICATION:	pros·trate
PRONUNCIATION:	prstrt
TRANSITIVE VERB:	Inflected forms: pros·trat·ed, pros·trat·ing, pros·trates 1. To put or throw flat with the face down, as in submission or adoration: “He did not simply sit and meditate, he also knelt down, sometimes even prostrated himself” (Iris Murdoch, The Good Apprentice (quoted by Harold Bloom in NYT Book Review, January 12, 1986) 1985). 2. To cause to lie flat: The wind prostrated the young trees. 3. To reduce to extreme weakness or incapacitation; overcome: an illness that prostrated an entire family; a nation that was prostrated by years of civil war.
ADJECTIVE:	1. Lying face down, as in submission or adoration. 2. Lying flat or at full length. 3. Reduced to extreme weakness or incapacitation; overcome. 4. Botany Growing flat along the ground.
ETYMOLOGY:	Middle English prostraten, from prostrat, prostrate, from Latin prstrtus, past participle of prsternere, to throw down : pr-, forward; see pro–¹ + sternere, to spread, cast down; see ster-² in Appendix I.
OTHER FORMS:	prostrator —NOUN


The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.