commercialize
Americanverb (used with object)
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commercializes,
present (3rd person singular)
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commercialized,
past participle, past
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commercializing
present participle
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to make commercial in character, methods, or spirit.
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to emphasize the profitable aspects of, especially at the expense of quality.
to commercialize one's artistic talent.
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to offer for sale; make available as a commodity.
verb
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to make commercial in aim, methods, or character
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to exploit for profit, esp at the expense of quality
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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commercializationnoun
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commercializernoun
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decommercializationnoun
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overcommercializationnoun
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decommercializeverb (used with object)
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overcommercializeverb (used with object)
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quasi-commercializedadjective
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uncommercializedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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commercializesimple
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commercializessimple
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have commercializedperfect
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has commercializedperfect
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am commercializingprogressive
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are commercializingprogressive
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is commercializingprogressive
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have been commercializingperfect progressive
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has been commercializingperfect progressive
Past
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commercializedsimple
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had commercializedperfect
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was commercializingprogressive
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were commercializingprogressive
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had been commercializingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of commercialize
Explanation
To commercialize something is to make money from it. If you're a painter, you might commercialize your art by printing greeting cards and selling them online. The verb commercialize comes from the adjective commercial, "done for financial profit," and its root, the Latin commercium, "trade." When you take an activity or an organization and manage it so that it results in a profit, you commercialize it. Delivering baked goods to your neighbors out of a sense of generosity is one thing — when you start charging them two dollars per cookie, you've commercialized your hobby.
Vocabulary lists containing commercialize
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:
While it’s a significant upgrade on paper, it’d be challenging to commercialize given uniformity issues during mass production, he says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 12, 2026
The company already received approval for a GLP-1 product in Brazil earlier this year, a semaglutide generic called Owozy that Sandoz will commercialize in the country in partnership with Adalvo.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
The push into London reflects a race among autonomous-driving companies to commercialize robotaxis by expanding fleets and entering new markets.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026
Kimberly-Clark describes its continuing efforts to commercialize the findings as a “moonshot,” and executives caution that there is a long research runway ahead.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
Clark and Andreessen quickly understood the huge potential for Web-browsing software and decided to partner up to commercialize it.
From "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman
Janssen Biotech develops, manufactures and commercializes the drug in exchange for royalty payments.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2025
Words such as love, trust, freedom, responsibility and choice have been deformed by a market logic that commercializes and commodifies all relations of exchange.
From Salon ● Jul. 30, 2022
Seagen, which develops and commercializes cancer drugs, saw its shares rise after news of the possible bid.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 7, 2022
“That’s very impressive,” says Stephen Dobson, a medical entomologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and the founder of MosquitoMate, a company that commercializes Wolbachia as a tool to control the Asian tiger mosquito.
From Nature ● Jul. 16, 2019
The man who discovers means to help his fellow man, does a good act, but is the man with the dollars in front of his eyes who commercializes the discovery and invention.
From Think A Book for To-day by Col. Wm. C. Hunter
Those, however, were much more quotidian in nature—slices of pie, humble shoes—and circumvented the traditional gallery-to-collector pipeline, with Oldenburg thumbing his nose at the commercialized art establishment.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
“But that’s not what’s being commercialized by the rest of the industry.”
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 15, 2026
If the technology is commercialized, a single programmable optical chip could perform several tasks, including controlling signal speed and switching between different functions.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 22, 2026
“I didn’t love it as much as the other because of the commercialized feeling of it, and just the fact it never felt you were alone in Yosemite,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
When it comes to money, the question isn’t whether human tissues and tissue research will be commercialized.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
“The industry has gotten really, really good at commercializing a molecule once you know it’s right, but has increasingly gotten worse at finding the right molecule,” Enveda Chief Executive Viswa Colluru said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 23, 2026
The work began as a University SmallSat Technology Partnerships project before developing into EraDrive, which is now commercializing its Era-Core software and related hardware for wider use.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 26, 2026
Its holdings could benefit by commercializing “free energy” or other novel forms of propulsion seemingly used by UFOs, says Tuttle.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
He also added that progress toward commercializing Amazon Leo would be a positive step “toward realizing the long-term opportunity around satellite broadband connectivity across a range of devices and formats.”
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 14, 2026
“Netscape helped to guarantee that these open protocols would not be proprietary by commercializing them for the public,” said Andreessen.
From "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman
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