mechanize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to make mechanical.
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to operate or perform by or as if by machinery.
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to introduce machinery into (an industry, enterprise, etc.), especially in order to replace manual labor.
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Military. to equip with tanks and other armored vehicles.
verb
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to equip (a factory, industry, etc) with machinery
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to make mechanical, automatic, or monotonous
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to equip (an army, etc) with motorized or armoured vehicles
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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mechanizesimple
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mechanizessimple
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have mechanizedperfect
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has mechanizedperfect
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am mechanizingprogressive
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are mechanizingprogressive
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is mechanizingprogressive
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have been mechanizingperfect progressive
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has been mechanizingperfect progressive
Past
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mechanizedsimple
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had mechanizedperfect
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was mechanizingprogressive
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were mechanizingprogressive
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had been mechanizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of mechanize
First recorded in 1695–1705; mechan(ic) + -ize
Explanation
When you use machines to streamline a process or job, you mechanize it. If you’re tired of pedaling uphill, mechanize your bike by putting a motor on it. Whenever someone uses automation or technology to do work that was previously done by humans, they mechanize that work. Throughout history, and especially since the Industrial Revolution, inventors have mechanized jobs that were once done by hand. Factories mechanize processes such as making glass bottles, once done more slowly and laboriously by glassblowers. Mechanize is rooted in the Greek mekhanikos, which means "inventive" or "pertaining to machines."
Vocabulary lists containing mechanize
Content Summary 5.3: The First Industrial Revolution
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Content Summary 6.1: Origins and Outcomes of World War I in Global Context
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The Modern Period, c. 1750 to c. 1914
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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:
Other growers are trying industrial-scale greenhouses, indoor beds of soil in massive warehouses and special robots to mechanize parts of the farming process.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 17, 2023
Leonard: There’s no way to mechanize it completely, at least not in a way that makes us all feel good about the outcome.
From Slate ● Jun. 17, 2020
Blockchain might be used, for example, to mechanize the enforcement of reporting rules for banks, so that government agencies need not actively monitor every relevant bank transaction.
From New York Times ● Feb. 15, 2019
Mining companies likely couldn’t have dug so deep without South Africa’s abundant cheap labor; and it is nearly impossible to mechanize older operations at current depths with the type of ore they are extracting.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2018
It was Foaly’s idea to mechanize the whole procedure.
From "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer
The second season similarly mechanizes Margulies' Laura to serve as a way in to examining the UBA workplace culture's enduring subtle bigotry.
From Salon ● Sep. 17, 2021
“The ACV provides a mobile capability that mechanizes the force to maintain tempo with the remainder of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force, specifically the M1A1 tank,” Col.
From Fox News ● Apr. 17, 2019
We hear them before we see them, often through a filter that distorts and mechanizes human voices.
From New York Times ● Sep. 26, 2017
Earlier this month, Sata tilted at Konkola chief executive Kishore Kumar over KCM's plan to lay off around 1,500 workers as it mechanizes some of its mining operations.
From Reuters ● Nov. 25, 2013
The muddy painting portrays a mechanized, fractured figure in motion.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
The sportsbooks would argue that the player only got caught because of the highly mechanized, public nature of the betting market.
From Slate ● Apr. 28, 2026
The process got more mechanized through the back half of the American Century—out with the cover cropping, in with the monocrop, packed tight as can be.
From Slate ● Apr. 20, 2026
In fact, she declined her father’s offer of a sewing machine to speed up the work, fearing that mechanized sewing would eliminate jobs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 12, 2026
“Because the headline doesn’t really fit the facts. You don’t call a bunch of dead rats mechanized just because you find them on a shelf near a motor.”
From "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" by Robert C. O'Brien
Sybilla Masters invented corn-processing machinery in 1715, mechanizing the arduous task of pounding corn into meal or flour.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 9, 2026
Ira “Bob” Born, a candy company executive known as the “Father of Peeps” for mechanizing the process to make marshmallow chicks, has died, according to the Lehigh Valley News.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 30, 2023
The cotton market had globalized and become increasingly competitive, but the state delayed mechanizing cotton production to continue offering low-skilled jobs that had low returns.
From Salon ● Sep. 27, 2022
The car-free carriage roads in a way became a hedge against modernity: Both summer people and locals would always have a place to escape the clattering engines of a mechanizing world.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 9, 2021
But always there was the same purpose stinking in it all, the mechanizing, the perfect mechanizing of human life.
From Twilight in Italy by Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
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.
