Join free

cite

English · Español · Français · Português · Thesaurus

AI In plain words

Writing a short explanation…

Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.

cite¹

  • /saɪt/

Sounds like sight, site · Rhymes with -aɪt

Where it comes from

From Old French citer, from Latin citare (“to cause to move, excite, summon”), frequentative of ciēre (“to rouse, excite, call”). Sense 4 is the original one.

verb cites · citing · cited

  1. transitive To quote; to repeat, as a passage from a book, or the words of another. WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected, but could not prove, and would cite as they took to the streets.
  2. transitive To mention; to make mention of. Until then, the Sunak administration remains a study in ineffectuality on multiple fronts, leading Goldsmith to cite, not unreasonably, “a kind of paralysis”.
  3. transitive To mention by way of explanation. Citing the risk involved with being out as a gay person and a union activist while simultaneously dealing with racism, Susan notes that there are no out gays or lesbians of color in her local, though its membership is about 80 percent people of color.
  4. To list the source(s) from which one took information, words or literary or verbal context. This Act may be cited as the Boiler Explosions Act, 1882.
  5. transitive To summon officially or authoritatively to appear in court. According to the tribe’s chairman, rangers cited five of the demonstrators, who had traveled to Nevada from New York, Washington, California and the European country of Malta. The chairman did not say what they were cited for.

cite²

  • /saɪt/

Sounds like sight, site · Rhymes with -aɪt

Where it comes from

From the first syllable of citation. Analogous to quote, from quotation.

noun cites

  1. informal A citation. We used the number of cites as a rough measure of the significance of each published paper.

Thesaurus

Closest in meaning: quote, reference, refer, name, mention, advert, summon, adduce, summons, acknowledge, bring up, call for, abduce, footnote, enumerate, say

Translations

Every language

verb quote

Españolcitar

verb summon

Españolcitar

Talk about this word

Cite this
MLA

"cite." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/cite. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

cite. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/cite

Chicago

"cite." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/cite.

BibTeX
@misc{cite_2026,
  title = {cite},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/cite},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}