homogenize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to form by blending unlike elements; make homogeneous.
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to prepare an emulsion, as by reducing the size of the fat globules in (milk or cream) in order to distribute them equally throughout.
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to make uniform or similar, as in composition or function.
to homogenize school systems.
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Metallurgy. to subject (metal) to high temperature to ensure uniform diffusion of components.
verb (used without object)
verb
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(tr) to break up the fat globules in (milk or cream) so that they are evenly distributed
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to make or become homogeneous
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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homogenizesimple
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homogenizessimple
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have homogenizedperfect
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has homogenizedperfect
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am homogenizingprogressive
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are homogenizingprogressive
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is homogenizingprogressive
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have been homogenizingperfect progressive
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has been homogenizingperfect progressive
Past
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homogenizedsimple
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had homogenizedperfect
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was homogenizingprogressive
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were homogenizingprogressive
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had been homogenizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of homogenize
First recorded in 1885–90; homogen(eous) + -ize
Explanation
To homogenize is to make something the same, or similar. When dairies homogenize milk, they mix it so the cream isn't separate from the rest of the milk, but instead all the liquid is the same consistency. When food processors homogenize milk, they make it uniform or alike, and when circumstances homogenize a neighborhood or school, the result is a group of people who generally all resemble each other. You might complain that high rents and gentrification in your town have homogenized it, leaving only wealthy professionals able to afford to live there. The Greek root, homogenes, means "of the same kind."
Vocabulary lists containing homogenize
Fast Food Nation
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A Culinary Vocabulary Sampler
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"Simon's Saga," Vocabulary from Episode 27
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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:
Stagnant communities, by contrast, tend to homogenize over time, as people conform to the views of those around them.
From Salon ● Mar. 26, 2025
"We tried to homogenize the point density equally year by year to make comparative metrics," Choi said.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 6, 2024
This has happened before, of course — the moment when Twitter turned from good-faith salon to sinister outrage derby, or when Instagram, and its army of influencers, learned to homogenize joy and beauty.
From New York Times ● Feb. 1, 2024
There is no real ability to homogenize a plate of food in a restaurant.’”
From The Verge ● Apr. 1, 2019
The shared brief episode of communism failed to homogenize these parts of the continent.
From The Belgian Curtain Europe after Communism by Vaknin, Samuel
“I do get wary of anything that homogenizes us.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 22, 2026
“It really homogenizes Asian American identity to be one thing when it really isn’t,” said Arshad, the Indian American student from Bentonville.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 19, 2022
Emergency thinking does damage to documentary; as dogma, it homogenizes its suffering victims, reducing its subjects’ stories to an artful piece of publicity.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 17, 2019
“They must either track any time that might be the subject of an innovative lawsuit,” Justice Thomas wrote, “or they must defend class actions against representative evidence that unfairly homogenizes an individual issue.”
From New York Times ● Mar. 22, 2016
TV homogenizes experience because it puts it all out there.
From Time Magazine Archive
Museum director-general Bart Ouvry said a new effort to digitize its archives commenced at the start of February, building on past work to create a homogenized data set.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 28, 2026
The garish look and homogenized feel of the show directly informed the way future Disney Channel hits like “Wizards of Waverly Place” and “Sonny With a Chance” would appear.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2024
Somehow, somewhere when they homogenized the Derby, they pulled some of the fun out of it.
From Salon ● May 4, 2024
The biggest question about the new model, Canup says, is whether material from the impact could “avoid being mixed and homogenized into the Earth’s mantle over the next four and a half billion years.”
From National Geographic ● Nov. 1, 2023
Don’t say huh-MODJ-uh-nus, a mispronunciation no doubt influenced by the word homogenized or the less familiar homogenous.
From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner
"So, what we think we are seeing between the 1930s and the present is the effect of that migration basically homogenizing genetic variation."
From Science Daily ● Oct. 12, 2023
This is the equalizing, homogenizing influence of pop culture at work — an influence that some queer people understandably mistrust.
From New York Times ● Jan. 17, 2023
Yet these striking creatures, as well as vultures, ibises, and others with distinctive physical traits, are likely to be the first to go extinct, homogenizing the avian world, according to one study.
From Science Magazine ● Jul. 21, 2022
These economic and behavioral shifts are heightening concerns about the viability of independent restaurants in big cities, where they double as bulwarks against the homogenizing effect of corporate chains.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 20, 2022
It had a unifying character and exercised a homogenizing function within each viable political unit.
From The Civilization of Illiteracy by Nadin, Mihai
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.
