carbonize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to char (organic matter) until it forms carbon.
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to coat or enrich with carbon.
verb (used without object)
verb
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to turn or be turned into carbon as a result of heating, fossilization, chemical treatment, etc
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(tr) to enrich or coat (a substance) with carbon
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(intr) to react or unite with carbon
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of carbonize
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.
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With the right equipment, we all have the ability to sous vide, slap chop, air fry, spiralize, carbonize and even slice our own bananas.
From Salon ● Jan. 29, 2014
Just the right mixture will neither burn nor carbonize and is said to be a "neutral" flame.
From Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting Electric, Forge and Thermit Welding together with related methods and materials used in metal working and the oxygen process for removal of carbon by Harold P. (Harold Phillips) Manly
He began to carbonize everything in nature that he could lay hands on.
From Edison, His Life and Inventions by Frank Lewis Dyer
Then coal and ore were arranged in heaps and in successive layers, as the charcoal-burner does with the wood which he wishes to carbonize.
From The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
Of course, the method employed to carbonize the materials is suspectible of variation, but the scientific principles involved are unchangeable, viz.:
From Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 by Various
Seiler wanted to know whether researchers could recover writing from these carbonized scrolls without physically unrolling them, an action that could cause the brittle papyrus to crumble into black dust.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 26, 2026
His winning edge was the carbonized bamboo filament he pioneered shortly after his initial 1879 breakthrough, providing the longevity needed to turn a novelty into a utility.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026
Later, she drives through a part of the forest that burned the year before to see “mile upon mile of carbonized trees and denuded earth, a now-familiar scene of extinguished life.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2025
“When you see black, that means it is charred, burned; it’s carbonized, and we have a big problem,” he says.
From Scientific American ● Aug. 15, 2023
Now this carbonized vegetation of a past age, the history of which has been briefly sketched in the foregoing pages, is one of the chief sources of our industrial supremacy as a nation.
From Coal and What We Get from It by Raphael Meldola
Dodds process, the, for carbonizing the heads of iron rails, 186.
From Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by John Charles Van Dyke
The work is constantly and uniformly exposed to a clean carbonizing atmosphere instead of partially spent carbonaceous solids which may give off very complex compounds of phosphorus, sulphur, carbon and nitrogen.
From The Working of Steel Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel by Fred H. (Fred Herbert) Colvin
Carbon with its extremely high melting-point had long attracted attention and in 1879 Edison produced a carbon filament by carbonizing a strip of paper.
From Artificial Light Its Influence upon Civilization by Matthew Luckiesh
Twenty point carbon, such as is used for carbonizing purposes is 0.20 per cent.
From The Working of Steel Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel by Fred H. (Fred Herbert) Colvin
It went into the floor, vaporizing the surface and carbonizing the multi-ply wood layer beneath it.
From The Hate Disease by Murray Leinster
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