hospitalize
Americanverb (used with object)
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hospitalizes,
present (3rd person singular)
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hospitalized,
past participle, past
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hospitalizing
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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hospitalizesimple
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hospitalizessimple
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have hospitalizedperfect
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has hospitalizedperfect
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am hospitalizingprogressive
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are hospitalizingprogressive
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is hospitalizingprogressive
-
have been hospitalizingperfect progressive
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has been hospitalizingperfect progressive
Past
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hospitalizedsimple
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had hospitalizedperfect
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was hospitalizingprogressive
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were hospitalizingprogressive
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had been hospitalizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hospitalize
Explanation
To hospitalize is either to check a patient into a hospital, or to injure someone seriously enough that they need to be treated in a hospital. If you get a bad infection, your doctor may decide to hospitalize you. Any time doctors decide that a patient ought to be treated intensively or needs a serious kind of surgery, they hospitalize their patient. It's more common to find this verb in the phrase "was hospitalized," as in "My favorite basketball player was hospitalized after collapsing on the court." Grammar snobs have long disapproved of verbs formed with the -ize suffix, and hospitalize was controversial when it was coined around 1870.
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:
Many were galvanized by the police’s decision over the weekend to forcibly hospitalize a prominent activist who has been on a hunger strike in support of the movement.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
When he gets unruly, they discharge or hospitalize him.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 10, 2024
The country has new vaccines for COVID, influenza and RSV, the three fall respiratory viruses that hospitalize and kill hundreds of thousands annually.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 6, 2023
The girl’s mother had previously told The Associated Press that agents had repeatedly ignored her pleas to hospitalize her medically fragile daughter, who had a history of heart problems and sick cell anemia.
From Washington Times ● May 21, 2023
I cannot get her out of this steel block unless I hospitalize her, perhaps operate.
From Sinister Paradise by Robert Moore Williams
In the United States, it hospitalizes 2% to 3% of infants annually, mostly between 0 and 5 months of age.
From Science Magazine ● May 18, 2023
Every year, it hospitalizes an average of 1 to 2 percent of children younger than 6 months.
From Salon ● Nov. 3, 2022
She and other infectious-disease specialists are also revisiting their response to RSV, a common virus that hospitalizes about 60,000 children younger than 5 each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 13, 2022
“Each year, the flu sickens millions and hospitalizes hundreds of thousands of people during the fall and winter months. The elderly are especially hard hit every year,” said Peter Kirk, Sermo CEO.
From Washington Times ● Oct. 2, 2020
Still, asthma kills about 4,000 people a year and hospitalizes at least half a million.
From Seattle Times ● May 3, 2010
Two months after arriving, he contracted typhoid fever and was hospitalized for the first time in his life, as he recounted to Allen.
From Barron's ● Nov. 5, 2026
Here is the actual reality of our grown-up life: When our youngest daughter was 2 months old, she was hospitalized in the intensive care unit for a lung infection.
From Slate ● Oct. 28, 2026
The Duchess of Sussex reportedly sent Thomas Markle Sr., 82, a final letter in December 2025, while he was hospitalized following a leg amputation.
From Salon ● Oct. 25, 2026
None of the participants had been hospitalized for COVID-19.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 19, 2026
Yet it was obvious to everybody that the eighth grade president was not hospitalized, not suffering from amnesia, not in a vegetative state, and was very, very much alive.
From "Schooled" by Gordon Korman
Last year, a sedan that had been struck by another car slammed into a homeless encampment in Koreatown, hospitalizing four people.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 4, 2022
Their warnings have come with over 1 million U.S. deaths from the disease and a fresh variant that daily is hospitalizing over 100,000 Americans and killing more than 300.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 1, 2022
"Just like previous variants, omicron is hospitalizing people and it is killing people."
From Salon ● Jan. 29, 2022
“If delta wasn’t making children sick and hospitalizing them, it might make sense to take more time to look at the safety profile,” said Morita, executive vice president for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 28, 2021
Mother was confused, but she always has the good manners to be hospitalizing even to perfect strangers, so she asked them in and told me to run squeeze some orange juice.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
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