To supply with air or oxygen, or to expose something to air so that oxygen can mix with it.
From the root 'aer-' (air) plus the Latin suffix -ate (meaning 'to cause' or 'to treat with'). The term became common in English in the 1800s, particularly in chemistry and biology.
When you aerate soil in gardening or aerate water in fish tanks, you're using the same principle that plants use to breathe—mixing air into a substance lets it absorb oxygen more efficiently!
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