homogenize
Americanverb (used with object)
-
homogenizes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
homogenized,
past participle, past
-
homogenizing
present participle
-
to form by blending unlike elements; make homogeneous.
-
to prepare an emulsion, as by reducing the size of the fat globules in (milk or cream) in order to distribute them equally throughout.
-
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)
-
homogenizes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
homogenized,
past participle, past
-
homogenizing
present participle
verb
-
(tr) to break up the fat globules in (milk or cream) so that they are evenly distributed
-
to make or become homogeneous
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
homogenizesimple
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homogenizessimple
-
have homogenizedperfect
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has homogenizedperfect
-
am homogenizingprogressive
-
are homogenizingprogressive
-
is homogenizingprogressive
-
have been homogenizingperfect progressive
-
has been homogenizingperfect progressive
Past
-
homogenizedsimple
-
had homogenizedperfect
-
was homogenizingprogressive
-
were homogenizingprogressive
-
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
Previously, the researchers determined that VFD's intense micromixing could produce clean biodiesel from used cooking oil and homogenize raw milk, but they hadn't used the platform to process more goopy liquids, such as shampoos.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 11, 2024
Usually U.S. remakes of foreign films tend to homogenize the source material.
From New York Times ● Dec. 29, 2022
There is no real ability to homogenize a plate of food in a restaurant.’”
From The Verge ● Apr. 1, 2019
These documents are the expression of the need to unify, homogenize, and integrate forces in a world of relatively autonomous entities-national states-competing more for resources and productive forces than for markets.
From The Civilization of Illiteracy by Mihai Nadin
“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
There isn’t anywhere else that one can walk into and immediately satisfy the social instinct among a convivial and refreshingly diverse clientele in what is becoming an increasingly homogenized locality.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 26, 2026
The loaf holds together, but it doesn’t feel homogenized.
From Salon ● Mar. 11, 2026
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
Covering not just movies and television but also theater and cabaret, Reed, a Southerner who seemed as much a part of Manhattan as the skyline, lorded over the arts with a homogenizing mainstream peremptoriness.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2026
"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
A separate study led by Alke Voskamp, a macroecologist at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, identified another homogenizing force: climate-driven shifts in birds’ ranges.
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
In the centrifugal or heterogenizing cycles national souls are evolved; in the centripetal or homogenizing they are given freedom to affect the world.
From The Crest-Wave of Evolution A Course of Lectures in History, Given to the Graduates' Class in the Raja-Yoga College, Point Loma, in the College-Year 1918-19 by Kenneth Morris
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
