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
-
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
-
is pasteurizingprogressive
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have been pasteurizingperfect progressive
-
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:
Both can unite around the idea that the past was better in some way than the present, which might include a time when the country didn’t pasteurize its milk.
From Salon ● Dec. 23, 2024
ATTA’s goal is to set up a full-fledged breast milk bank with the ability to pasteurize.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 1, 2024
To pasteurize the pee, it stays in the jug for at least two months before the farmer applies it, plant by plant.
From New York Times ● Jun. 17, 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
It gets into their young intestines, God bless 'em, and makes you pasteurize all they eat.
From His Family by Ernest Poole
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
The storage bricks will provide industrial heat once again as the beer is pasteurized, and steam is sprayed over the bottles to kill microorganisms.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
“He was looking for a way to expand what he was doing and not just be a commercial, pasteurized, homogenized milk provider.”
From Salon ● Jun. 22, 2026
Even after being squeezed and processed and pasteurized, the juice was gross.
From Slate ● Apr. 20, 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
Recent innovations at Unitherm include a new process for peeling and pasteurizing onions.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 9, 2017
If the milk is filthy, boiling or pasteurizing does not remove the dirt.
From Maintaining Health Formerly Health and Efficiency by R. L. Alsaker
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.
