individualize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to make individual or distinctive; give an individual or distinctive character to.
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to mention, indicate, or consider individually; specify; particularize.
verb
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to make or mark as individual or distinctive in character
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to consider or treat individually; particularize
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to make or modify so as to meet the special requirements of a person
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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individualizesimple
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individualizessimple
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have individualizedperfect
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has individualizedperfect
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am individualizingprogressive
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are individualizingprogressive
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is individualizingprogressive
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have been individualizingperfect progressive
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has been individualizingperfect progressive
Past
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individualizedsimple
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had individualizedperfect
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was individualizingprogressive
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were individualizingprogressive
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had been individualizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of individualize
First recorded in 1630–40; individual + -ize
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:
The researchers hope that the results of this study will help to identify elbow injuries in children who play baseball and to individualize treatment based on skeletal maturity.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 30, 2023
The production would be stronger if more effort were made to further individualize the subordinate characters.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 26, 2023
“It helps to humanize and individualize the vastness of the Holocaust and personalize history that is sometimes only communicated through statistics,” she added.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 16, 2022
“But in the end,” she adds, “there’s always going to be something to individualize your handwriting from somebody else.”
From Scientific American ● Aug. 2, 2022
Especially is this the case in memory properly so called, where the peculiar space and time relations individualize the revived experience.
From International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume I Philosophy and Metaphysics by Various
Until learning how our financial systems work, I took for granted the way our culture individualizes money.
From Salon ● Oct. 8, 2024
While golfers can provide launch monitor numbers as part of the interview process with Callaway’s Distance Fitting, Vrska said it is the one-on-one interaction that refines and individualizes the recommendations.
From Golf Digest ● May 8, 2020
Lee, rescuing the production with his veteran caginess, sharply individualizes Stokes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 4, 2018
“Archetypes of Femininity” is the theme of Cristian Ianculescu’s show at Waverly Street Gallery, but the artist individualizes his sculpted women with a variety of styles and materials.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 19, 2017
The ethos individualizes groups and keeps them apart.
From Folkways A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals by Sumner, William Graham
Meta "did not pause the system for the individualized, leave- and accommodation-neutral review that the law requires," the 71-page complaint said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 15, 2026
In 2024, the FTC asked eight companies to disclose how they used technologies such as AI and advanced algorithms to target individualized prices to customers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 1, 2026
In these cases, “the State is not constitutionally required to grant individualized exemptions to specific athletes or subclasses,” Justice Kavanaugh says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
Ultimately, Black had to file a habeas petition in federal court, arguing that going seven months without a hearing violated his constitutional right to an individualized determination.
From Slate ● Jun. 17, 2026
Gone was the desperate, urgent, intense feeling of being at home; rare was the experience of feeling myself individualized by family intimates.
From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez
“I think every single one of our routines, BJ did an incredible and phenomenal job of individualizing them.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 7, 2026
Walt Disney took his own liberties, experimentally drafting the raven-haired beauty as both a redhead and a blond, and individualizing the dwarfs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 19, 2025
When the script doesn’t provide the individualizing details that transcend stereotypes, the performances do.
From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2019
They do a good job of individualizing instruction and enrichment.
From Slate ● Feb. 14, 2019
This was the too great individualizing of one point in a character, and the making the man or woman nothing but a blunderer, a lover, a coxcomb, a tyrant and the like.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 2 "French Literature" to "Frost, William" by Various
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.
