anesthetize
Americanverb (used with object)
-
anesthetizes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
anesthetized,
past participle, past
-
anesthetizing
present participle
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
anesthetizesimple
-
anesthetizessimple
-
have anesthetizedperfect
-
has anesthetizedperfect
-
am anesthetizingprogressive
-
are anesthetizingprogressive
-
is anesthetizingprogressive
-
have been anesthetizingperfect progressive
-
has been anesthetizingperfect progressive
Past
-
anesthetizedsimple
-
had anesthetizedperfect
-
was anesthetizingprogressive
-
were anesthetizingprogressive
-
had been anesthetizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of anesthetize
1840–50; < Greek anaísthēt ( os ) ( see anesthetic) + -ize
Explanation
If you need to have surgery, a doctor will anesthetize you, or give you medicine to make you sleep through the operation. When a vet knocks your dog out to clean his teeth, she anesthetizes him. Oral surgeons also anesthetize patients before removing their wisdom teeth. In both cases, special drugs are used to put the patient under, or make him sleep long enough for the procedure to be finished before he wakes up. A doctor whose job it is to anesthetize patients is called an anesthesiologist. The root word is Greek: anaisthesia, "lack of feeling or sensation."
Vocabulary lists containing anesthetize
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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:
One way people deal with these costs is to anesthetize themselves to reality.
From Salon ● Nov. 1, 2023
Zoo officials said the tragedy shows why decisions to anesthetize animals are not taken lightly.
From Washington Times ● Aug. 30, 2023
“We need to use our drug doses very carefully and make sure that we give them enough drugs to anesthetize them safely,” he said.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 7, 2022
They’d dipped the animals in magnesium chloride to anesthetize them, a common lab procedure.
From New York Times ● Aug. 27, 2022
In fact, the vapors of chloroform, which anesthetize plants, also prevent nitrification, since they anaesthetize the nitric ferment.
From Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 by Various
That’s not easy, since capybaras max out around 155 pounds; sometimes he anesthetizes them for the trip back to the river.
From Slate ● May 27, 2026
After several visits, Marx underwent a TAP block, an injection that anesthetizes the anterior abdominal wall.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 19, 2021
She anesthetizes the animals, carefully removes their brains, firms the brains up with formalin, freezes them, then shaves them into slices thinner than a strand of human hair to study under a microscope.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 16, 2013
Cyclopropane, a new gas, is most respected because a trifle of it quickly anesthetizes the patient and causes no bad aftereffects.
From Time Magazine Archive
Your wife has leprosy!—not the physical form, but the kind that anesthetizes, ulcerates, deforms the soul—the leprosy of self-pity.
From Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness by Robert S. Carroll
“The brain didn’t evolve to be anesthetized, so we want to understand how the brain comes back from it.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 3, 2026
Bogdan fears that by cleaning up Meridian Hill Park -- which is managed and maintained by the National Park Service -- its history as a place of Black protest and community will be anesthetized.
From Barron's ● May 19, 2026
Those latter respondents have presumably been anesthetized, never set foot in the real world or live in a permanent, chemically induced stupor.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 30, 2025
Proulx found something similar in 2018, when he and colleagues injected tracer dyes into the cisterna magna and found they entered the systemic blood more quickly in awake mice than anesthetized ones.
From Science Magazine ● May 24, 2024
Bailey sat wrapped in his decision and anesthetized by youth.
From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
The next day, the video shows care staff anesthetizing Jackie for the blood transfusion and notes she was stronger and more alert the next day.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
These are meant to be the anesthetizing accompaniment to playlists featuring purveyors of sonic wallpaper made to help your whole body chill out — a vibe-fest, on demand.
From Salon ● Apr. 5, 2025
Sampling wild primates traditionally requires trapping and anesthetizing the animals.
From Science Magazine ● Jan. 5, 2023
Their faces, simultaneously melodramatic and numbed, reflect a strangely complex emotional truth, where the experiences of depression, anxiety, trauma and grief unfold amid an absurdist carnival of anesthetizing content and luxury products.
From New York Times ● Nov. 15, 2021
By anesthetizing the same area he could stop immediately severe attacks of asthma and of coughing.
From Nature Cure by Henry Lindlahr
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.
