generalize

American  

[jen-er-uh-lahyz] / ˈdʒɛn ər əˌlaɪz /

especially British, generalise

verb (used with object)

• generalizes,
  present (3rd person singular)
• generalized,
  past participle,  past
• generalizing
  present participle

1. to infer (a general principle, trend, etc.) from particular facts, statistics, or the like.

2. to infer or form (a general principle, opinion, conclusion, etc.) from only a few facts, examples, or the like.

3. to give a general rather than a specific or special character or form to.

4. to make general; bring into general use or knowledge.

---

verb (used without object)

• generalizes,
  present (3rd person singular)
• generalized,
  past participle,  past
• generalizing
  present participle

1. to form general principles, opinions, etc.

2. to deal, think, or speak in generalities.

3. to make general inferences.

generalize British  

/ ˈdʒɛnrəˌlaɪz /

verb

1. to form (general principles or conclusions) from (detailed facts, experience, etc); infer

2. (intr) to think or speak in generalities, esp in a prejudiced way

3. (tr; usually passive) to cause to become widely used or known

4. (intr)

   1. to spread throughout the body

   2. to change from a localized infection or condition to a systemic one

      generalized infection

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• generalizer
  noun
• generalizable
  adjective
• nongeneralized
  adjective
• ungeneralized
  adjective
• ungeneralizing
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Participles

• generalizing
  present
• generalized
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• generalize
  simple
• generalizes
  simple
• have generalized
  perfect
• has generalized
  perfect
• am generalizing
  progressive
• are generalizing
  progressive
• is generalizing
  progressive
• have been generalizing
  perfect progressive
• has been generalizing
  perfect progressive

Past

• generalized
  simple
• had generalized
  perfect
• was generalizing
  progressive
• were generalizing
  progressive
• had been generalizing
  perfect progressive

Future

• will generalize
  simple
• will have generalized
  perfect
• will be generalizing
  progressive
• will have been generalizing
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of generalize

First recorded in 1745–55; general + -ize

Explanation

To generalize is to use specific examples to make broader points. Generalizing makes large points, though they aren't always necessarily true. When someone says "in general" they're talking about what things are like in the big picture or overall. Similarly, generalizing takes small examples and uses them to make bigger points. Saying that all teens are selfish because you know a few selfish teens is generalizing. Saying all adults are uptight is an example of generalizing. Unfortunately, generalizing can be dangerous. Stereotyping is a form of generalizing. Sometimes it’s better to stick to specific examples and to avoid generalizing.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

generalize generalizes generalized generalizing

"Keeping it in flatter parts of the landscape, where lots of solutions perform similarly well, turns out to be what allows these models to generalize."

From Science Daily ● Jan. 15, 2026

“The problem with current transformer-based models is that they need a lot of data, and they don’t generalize outside….of what they have seen.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 1, 2025

AI models may perform well on the data they’re trained on, but “really the proof of the value of it is, does it generalize to an external population?” he noted.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 11, 2025

And economics teaches us not to generalize data trends when the “rules of the game” change.

From Barron's ● Oct. 22, 2025

Third, experimentation involves both a study of the external world and a capacity to generalize.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

Their ability to predict which enhancer variants will alter genomic instructions is not limited to limbs and generalizes to thousands of enhancers across cell types and species.

From Science Daily ● Feb. 6, 2024

And things become really exciting when one generalizes the concept of happy numbers.

From Scientific American ● Oct. 24, 2023

Another clear pitfall of the Pace approach is that it generalizes calories burnt.

From Salon ● Nov. 14, 2022

“Outlier II” involves an A.I.-generated melody that generalizes over time, gradually losing nuance before being disrupted by a series of chance-based improvisations.

From New York Times ● Nov. 3, 2022

As a moral declaration the old truism seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it generalizes, I can’t believe it with my stomach.

From "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien

Higher prices have a more generalized effect on economic growth, which can’t be attributed to specific products.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026

"We can apply these generalized laws to better understand evaporating black holes in quantum theory and black hole mergers, like those detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration using gravitational waves."

From Science Daily ● Jul. 13, 2026

I didn’t have a deep desire for a child, just a generalized sense that I should consider it before it became impossible.

From Slate ● Jul. 6, 2026

The paper estimated that the rise of remote work explained 32% of the generalized increase in mental distress nationwide between the prepandemic period of 2011 to 2019 and the postpandemic period of 2022 to 2024.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 27, 2026

Beginning in the late ninth or early tenth century a.d., public monuments in Chichen Itza deemphasized the king, changing from official narratives of regal actions to generalized, nontextual images of religion, commerce, and war.

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann

It requires a model capable of generalizing or learning to reason, rather than pattern matching.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 1, 2025

He found that Mirai did, outperforming traditional models while also generalizing better to minority patients.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 11, 2025

In the next months, Svoboda and the scientists from the Chatterjee group will work on generalizing their results to other games and different settings.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 6, 2024

It then falters by generalizing a history that, with some added details, could have better emphasized Lil Nas X’s current impact on culture.

From New York Times ● Jan. 25, 2024

Reasoning by induction—the process of generalizing from the available evidence—is the only real way of making progress in the world of things.

From "Words Like Loaded Pistols" by Sam Leith