sterilize
Americanverb (used with object)
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sterilizes,
present (3rd person singular)
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sterilized,
past participle, past
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sterilizing
present participle
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to destroy microorganisms in or on, usually by bringing to a high temperature with steam, dry heat, or boiling liquid.
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to destroy the ability of (a person or animal) to reproduce by removing the sexual organs or inhibiting their functions.
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to make (land) barren or unproductive.
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Informal. to delete or remove anything comprising or damaging from.
to sterilize a government document before releasing it to the press.
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Informal. to isolate or completely protect from unwanted, unauthorized, or unwholesome activities, attitudes, influences, etc..
You can't sterilize children against violence.
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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sterilizabilitynoun
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sterilizernoun
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presterilizeverb (used with object)
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resterilizeverb (used with object)
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self-sterilizedadjective
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sterilizableadjective
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unsterilizedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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sterilizesimple
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sterilizessimple
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have sterilizedperfect
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has sterilizedperfect
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am sterilizingprogressive
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are sterilizingprogressive
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is sterilizingprogressive
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have been sterilizingperfect progressive
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has been sterilizingperfect progressive
Past
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sterilizedsimple
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had sterilizedperfect
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was sterilizingprogressive
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were sterilizingprogressive
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had been sterilizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of sterilize
Explanation
When you sterilize something, you make it completely clean and free from any contaminant. It's important to sterilize tools, hands, and furniture in hospitals so germs don't get spread between patients. People who make their own jam and pickles need to sterilize the jars first, and when you feed a tiny baby it's important to sterilize the bottles. Whenever you need to make sure something is as clean as possible, you should sterilize it. The earliest meaning of sterilize is still in use, too: to "make infertile," or to make it impossible for an organism to reproduce or have a baby.
Vocabulary lists containing sterilize
Everything, Everything
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Z for Zachariah
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This Week In Words: Current Events Vocab for January 16–22, 2021
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
We press that mash, sterilize it by heating, bottle it and ship it out.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 15, 2026
Hospitals use it to sterilize medical devices, and some municipalities use low levels to treat public water supplies.
From Salon ● Dec. 15, 2025
Scientists in the 1950s discovered a technique that uses radiation to sterilize male parasitic flies.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2025
We cannot even think much about how to sterilize water before drinking it, because there is no cooking gas and no wood to light a fire.
From Slate ● Oct. 22, 2024
What Priddy needed was a blanket legal order that would authorize him to sterilize a woman on explicitly eugenic grounds; one such test case would set the standard for a thousand.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Before the male mosquitoes are released, an X-ray machine sterilizes them.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 25, 2024
"It wipes out the bacteria -- sterilizes the culture with a single dose of light. And then when you look at what occurs with electron microscopy, you see the collapse of the chromosome."
From Science Daily ● Nov. 2, 2023
Circulating at 380 degrees, this steam not only heats the buildings, saving the cost of bulky on-site boilers, but also sterilizes the hospitals’ surgical instruments.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 14, 2019
Disease should not be a problem because the roiling lye sterilizes the organic material, says Joe Wilson, CEO of Bio-Response Solutions.
From Scientific American ● Sep. 7, 2017
Science is not an individual possession, and the man who tries to appropriate it to himself often sterilizes his work and forfeits his place in the history of progress.
From The War in the Air; Vol. 1 The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
The female flies only mate once, so sterilized males help suppress the population.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
Another group of eight aging mice served as controls and received sterilized fecal material instead.
From Science Daily ● May 9, 2026
A handful of deer in Avalon, Catalina’s only city, will be sterilized and allowed to live out their days on the island.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 3, 2026
One theory was that a specific piece of equipment—a drill that Acer used on all the patients—wasn’t properly sterilized.
From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2025
Beginning in August 1954, screw-worms reared and sterilized in an Agriculture Department laboratory in Florida were flown to Curasao and released from airplanes at the rate of about 400 per square mile per week.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
For decades, the U.S. has maintained a program in which these flies are bred in a lab, bathed in sterilizing radiation and released around Panama, which prevents the insect from creeping northward.
From Salon ● Jun. 30, 2026
The most effective strategy involved sterilizing about 22% of adult female koalas each year in areas with the highest population densities rather than applying the approach across the entire region.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 8, 2026
Germaphobic parents will appreciate the UV sterilizing glovebox, if not want to crawl in themselves.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026
Because when doctors and dentists practiced universal precautions—like wearing gloves and properly sterilizing their equipment—there was almost no risk of HIV transmission.
From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2025
I plunk the tools into the sterilizing machine, which will kill the germs so the tools will be ready to use on the next patient.
From "The Queen of Water" by Laura Resau
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
