metabolize
Americanverb (used with or without object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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metabolizesimple
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metabolizessimple
-
have metabolizedperfect
-
has metabolizedperfect
-
am metabolizingprogressive
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are metabolizingprogressive
-
is metabolizingprogressive
-
have been metabolizingperfect progressive
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has been metabolizingperfect progressive
Past
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metabolizedsimple
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had metabolizedperfect
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was metabolizingprogressive
-
were metabolizingprogressive
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had been metabolizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of metabolize
First recorded in 1885–90; metabol(ism) + -ize
Explanation
When bodies process various substances, you can say they metabolize them. For example, when your body takes in calories, it metabolizes them, putting them to good use. This verb, a back-formation from metabolism, is pretty much the sine qua non — or essential element — of being alive: it's everyone's 24/7 occupation. The Greek root, metabole, only means "a change," which is the one thing that's inescapable while we go about in this mortal coil.
Vocabulary lists containing metabolize
Ecology - Middle School
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Ecology - High School
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Cosmos
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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:
Movies, for better or worse, are among the few remaining ways for Americans to encounter, metabolize, and wrestle with big moral issues at scale.
From Slate ● Mar. 13, 2026
At the basic cellular level, we are beings that metabolize energy, reproduce offspring and pursue survival.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 3, 2026
“You help them alchemize or metabolize the emotional experience and then it becomes an experience in the past, where that feeling has been able to escape the body,” she says.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 1, 2026
Side effects could be more severe for older adults, who metabolize medicine differently than younger people.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 4, 2025
His job, it seemed, was to take the chaos and metabolize it somehow into calm leadership—every day of the week, every week of the year.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
The driving factor for food and drink preference is not just taste, but also how an individual's body metabolizes it, Yaseen said.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 4, 2023
Day after day, year after year, that repetitive exposure to the mainstream metabolizes in you until you’re irrevocably changed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 2023
As the liver metabolizes vinyl chloride, it spits out a chemical called chloroethylene oxide, which subsequently binds to our DNA, essentially vandalizing it and increasing the risk of tumor formation.
From Salon ● Feb. 15, 2023
One limitation with Paxlovid is that the active ingredient is given alongside another drug that reduces how fast the body metabolizes it, and this can also affect other drugs a patient is on.
From Scientific American ● Feb. 8, 2023
"Oh, it metabolizes, all right, but you'd better find yourself another axiom, pretty quick."
From Contamination Crew by Nourse, Alan Edward
The pill’s active ingredient, orforglipron, is primarily metabolized by the liver.
From Barron's ● May 4, 2026
“Most of it doesn’t get metabolized, meaning that we don’t extract energy from it, and it passes through and is excreted in the stool,” Fetter said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 24, 2026
Known for their antioxidant properties, they are water-soluble, meaning they are quickly metabolized and therefore unlikely to leave a mark on the skin.
From Salon ● Jan. 20, 2025
"As we get a better grasp on identifying and measuring these diverse circulating molecules in our bodies and how they're metabolized, we could make huge strides in personalizing medicine accordingly," says Metallo.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 18, 2024
By October, however, he had metabolized most of his body fat and was having difficulty staying warm during the long, cold nights.
From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
At the same time, arginine slightly increased the presence of streptococci that are better at metabolizing arginine.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 9, 2026
To this day people can still mimic Catherine O'Hara's showstopping lip-synch without metabolizing the song's meaning.
From Salon ● Apr. 26, 2023
When the researchers examined APOE4-affected brain cells, they noted abnormalities in many systems for metabolizing lipids.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 18, 2022
The primary way that medical professionals treat people who have taken the chemicals is by giving them a drug, fomepizole, that prevents the body from metabolizing them, said Leo Schep, a toxicologist in New Zealand.
From New York Times ● Oct. 21, 2022
First, when Martian soil was mixed with a sterile organic soup from Earth, something in the soil chemically broke down the soup—almost as if there were respiring microbes metabolizing a food package from Earth.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
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.
