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establish

verbcommon in dialogue

  • Australia//ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ//
  • New Zealand//əˈstɛb.ləʃ//
  • Scotland//ɪˈstab.lɪʃ//

To make stable or firm; to confirm.

verb

  1. 1

    To make stable or firm; to confirm.

    Once it [a snowdrop variety] became established, some bulbs were lifted and passed on to be chipped (i.e. cut into small pieces and grown on).

  2. 2

    To form; to found; to institute; to set up in business.

    But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.

  3. 3

    To appoint or adopt, as officers, laws, regulations, guidelines, etc.; to enact; to ordain.

    By some paradoxical evolution rancour and intolerance have been established in the vanguard of primitive Christianity. Mrs. Spoker, in common with many of the stricter disciples of righteousness, was as inclement in demeanour as she was cadaverous in aspect.

  4. 4

    To prove and cause to be accepted as true; to demonstrate.

    to establish a fact

    to establish a pattern

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *steh₂- Proto-Indo-European *-éh₁ti Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éh₁yeti Proto-Indo-European *sth₂éh₁yeti Proto-Italic *staējō Proto-Italic *staēō Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlomder. Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlis Proto-Italic *-ðlis Proto-Italic *staðlis? Latin stabilis Proto-Indo-European *-yétider. Latin -iō Latin stabilīre Old French establirbor. Middle English establissen English establish Inherited from Middle English establissen, from Old French establiss-, stem of some of the conjugated forms of establir (modern French établir), from Latin stabiliō, stabilīre, from stabilis (“firm, steady, stable”).

Forms

past tense
established
past participle
established
present participle
establishing
third person singular
establishes
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).