pasteurize
Americanverb (used with object)
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pasteurizes,
present (3rd person singular)
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pasteurized,
past participle, past
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pasteurizing
present participle
verb
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to subject (milk, beer, etc) to pasteurization
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rare to subject (a patient) to pasteurism
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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pasteurizesimple
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pasteurizessimple
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have pasteurizedperfect
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has pasteurizedperfect
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am pasteurizingprogressive
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are pasteurizingprogressive
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is pasteurizingprogressive
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have been pasteurizingperfect progressive
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has been pasteurizingperfect progressive
Past
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pasteurizedsimple
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had pasteurizedperfect
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was pasteurizingprogressive
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were pasteurizingprogressive
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had been pasteurizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of pasteurize
Explanation
To pasteurize food is to sterilize it, or heat it until harmful bacteria is killed, making it safe to eat. Most dairies pasteurize their milk before bottling it. When food producers pasteurize their products, they are making it safer for large numbers of people to eat or drink them. When they pasteurize apple cider, for example, it's heated to a certain temperature for a specific length of time and then cooled before being put in containers for sale. The word pasteurize comes from the name of the French chemist who invented this process, Louis Pasteur.
Vocabulary lists containing pasteurize
You Name It: Eponyms
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A Culinary Vocabulary Sampler
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National Spelling Bee '14: Prelims Round 2
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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:
Usually after a dairy farmer sells colostrum to a supplier, the process is that the manufacturer proceeds to remove the fat, pasteurize it and dries it down into a powder.
From Salon ● Jan. 19, 2024
Gas is used across a range of processes that most people never see — to forge steel to make cars, make glass bottles and pasteurize milk and cheese.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 20, 2022
Then the banks thaw the milk, pool it, pasteurize it, test it, refreeze it, and send it where it’s needed.
From Slate ● Feb. 9, 2022
“For them, solar cooking can reduce deforestation and soil erosion, and they can also use the cookers to pasteurize water where there’s a problem finding a potable supply.”
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 23, 2019
If such conditions cannot be met, it is advisable to pasteurize the modified-milk mixture after the materials have been put together.
From Woman's Institute Library of Cookery Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables by Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
The exhaust produced from the turbines then pasteurizes the wastewater, purifying it so it can be reused.
From Inc ● Jun. 8, 2012
Arethusa pasteurizes it just the way it comes out of the cows, making its whole milk about 4 percent butterfat.
From New York Times ● Jun. 25, 2011
The study followed adults who drank 500ml of pure pasteurized orange juice every day for two months.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 13, 2026
In the early 2000s, McAfee was producing pasteurized milk for the dairy group Organic Valley when a raw-milk enthusiast named James Stewart made an unusual request.
From Salon ● Jun. 22, 2026
Even after being squeezed and processed and pasteurized, the juice was gross.
From Slate ● Apr. 20, 2026
They point out that pasteurized milk has also been linked to outbreaks, although many scientists say raw milk is associated with a higher occurrence of foodborne illnesses.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 11, 2026
From eighteen hundred bottles eighteen hundred carefully labelled infants were simultaneously sucking down their pint of pasteurized external secretion.
From "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
In fact, in 1977, Florida boasted 53 different processing plants for crushing fruit, pasteurizing, or making fresh juice or frozen concentrate.
From Slate ● Apr. 20, 2026
They also note that cooking foods properly and pasteurizing dairy products inactivates the virus.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 30, 2024
The Food and Drug Administration says pasteurizing milk kills the virus.
From New York Times ● May 24, 2024
Health experts cite the risk of foodborne illnesses from viruses such as salmonella, listeria, campylobacter and E. coli, which would typically be removed in the process of heating, or pasteurizing, the milk.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 24, 2023
Second, pasteurizing, when you heat the milk to 155 degrees or 170 degrees F. for thirty minutes.
From Mother's Remedies Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers of the United States and Canada by Thomas Jefferson Ritter
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.
