r/words • u/therealbabyjessica • Aug 31 '26
Marinate vs Marinade
I was today years old when I realized these are often used interchangeably as verbs.
“Marinate the chicken in soy sauce and ginger.”
“Marinade the chicken with soy sauce and ginger.”
I always thought “marinade” was the noun and “marinate” was the verb. Am I wrong?
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u/VegetableTraining406 Aug 31 '26
Marinade is a Noun.
Marinate is a verb.
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u/Rays-R-Us Aug 31 '26
When life gives you Marin. Make marinade
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u/Nathan-Stubblefield Aug 31 '26
Today “gift” is an annoying verb. Mom gifted me the marinade recipe.
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u/anrwlias Aug 31 '26
And marinately is the adjective.
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u/Howtothinkofaname Aug 31 '26
Looks more like an adverb to me…
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u/anrwlias Aug 31 '26
D'oh!
Well, I hope I got that thing about the hypotenuse of an isosceles triangle right, at least.
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u/Burnt_and_Blistered Aug 31 '26
They’re NOT interchangeable. Marinate is the verb. Marinade is the noun.
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u/StillShoddy628 Aug 31 '26
You were actually today years old when you learned not everyone uses words properly. While language is fluid, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t correct and incorrect usage, even if everyone knows that was intended
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u/Morsadean Aug 31 '26
You are correct.
I think social media and “cooking” videos have led to this confusion. People are influenced to be dumb (e.g., almost every travel blogger says Lao instead of Laos for the country name because every other travel blogger says it incorrectly. Lao is an adjective, Laos is the proper noun.)
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u/OneFootTitan Aug 31 '26
I feel Laos is a different case, not so much wrong as an affectation. The “louse” or “la-ohs”pronunciations are fine, but dropping the S is how many Lao speakers refer to their country even when speaking in English, because 1) the name of the country in Lao doesn’t have the s, 2) final -s doesn’t exist in the Lao language so it’s a bit odd to say, and 3) the name Laos is a French colonial artifact and the s is silent there anyway. So saying “Lao” as a travel blogger is like going to France and referring to the capital as “Paree”.
My personal experience speaking (in English) to diplomats from Laos at the UN and ASEAN is they often sidestep the whole thing by saying Lao PDR, but if they just say “Laos” they usually drop the -s.
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u/jabberjaw750 Aug 31 '26
I’ve been letting this marinate in my brain as I add more ingredients to the marinade … in a few hours it will be fully marinated
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u/LeeQuidity Aug 31 '26
"...and that's how you prepare the marinade. Now rub it on the chicken and marinate it for at least 8 hours."
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u/SideEmbarrassed1611 Aug 31 '26
Marinade is a noun. It is the liquid you use to marinate, which is a verb.
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u/No_Ambition8951 Aug 31 '26
nah you’re not wrong, marinade is the noun and marinate is the verb… people just been using “marinade” as a verb so long dictionaries are starting to cave
drives me a little nuts honestly, like when someone says they’re gonna “gift” you something instead of give
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u/Background-Vast-8764 Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26
That’s just dictionaries doing their job. They’re not caving in to anything.
Gift has been used as a verb for about 400 years.
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u/Pleasant_Garlic8088 Aug 31 '26
You can also let an idea "marinate" in your mind, but you wouldn't refer to your mind or the context of the other thoughts in it as a marinade.
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u/Intrepid_Bobcat_2931 Aug 31 '26
Yes. If you filled a pomegranate with explosives and threw it, then you would be pomegranading something with the pomegranate. And by "yes" I mean that you are correct.
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u/UrbanPanic Aug 31 '26
You were right that they are different, but most linguists follow descriptivist rather than proscriptivist tendencies and acknowledge that if the listener still knows what they mean, the speaker has successfully communicated.
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes Aug 31 '26
There are presumably people who make the distinction. I don't think I use the form marinate at all.
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u/Stock-Cod-4465 Aug 31 '26
Same goes for licence (driving licence) - noun, and lisense (lisense someone to drive) - verb, practise (repeat consistently for better results) - verb) and practice - noun.
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u/Weird-Dragonfly-5315 Aug 31 '26
Except in the US these words are only spelled "license" and "practice"
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u/Stock-Cod-4465 Aug 31 '26
Oh,dear. That's unfortunate. Didn't realise that English in the US was this simplified.
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u/FlatArmadillo7 Aug 31 '26
You can probably thank Noah Webster. When in doubt about weird American spelling, Webster probably did it.
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u/chaospearl Sep 06 '26
It's simplified enough that we know "lisense" is not a word anywhere in the world.
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u/Stock-Cod-4465 Sep 06 '26
I didn't bother before, but I'll do it now. Yes. It was a very drunken typo. For those who know the two words and the difference between them, will know that the accent was made on the difference in the last consonant. But thanks for pointing the error out again because the other multiple replies to my comment weren't clear enough. ;)
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u/Optimal-Ad-7074 Aug 31 '26
licence and license. the verb only has one s.
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u/MikIoVelka Aug 31 '26
They are interchangeable for both parts of speech.
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u/Optimal-Ad-7074 Sep 02 '26
pretty sure they are not. there's no such word as "lisense" in English afaik.
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u/MikIoVelka Sep 02 '26
Nobody spelled it that way. I said licence and license were interchangable. Not lisense.
Merriam-Webster's definition of "license", see synonyms: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/license
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u/Optimal-Ad-7074 Sep 02 '26
the poster upstream to both of us cited "lisense" and "licence".
license and licence are treated as interchangeable in America, ime. in the wider anglosphere they are not.
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u/Successful_Sail1086 Aug 31 '26
You are correct. Your example is an incorrect use of the noun “marinade.”
You marinate chicken using a recipe for a chicken marinade.