popularize
Americanverb (used with object)
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popularizes,
present (3rd person singular)
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popularized,
past participle, past
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popularizing
present participle
verb
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to make popular; make attractive to the general public
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to make or cause to become easily understandable or acceptable
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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popularizationnoun
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popularizernoun
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repopularizationnoun
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depopularizeverb (used with object)
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repopularizeverb (used with object)
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antipopularizationadjective
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semipopularizedadjective
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unpopularizedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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popularizesimple
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popularizessimple
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have popularizedperfect
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has popularizedperfect
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am popularizingprogressive
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are popularizingprogressive
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is popularizingprogressive
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have been popularizingperfect progressive
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has been popularizingperfect progressive
Past
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popularizedsimple
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had popularizedperfect
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was popularizingprogressive
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were popularizingprogressive
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had been popularizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of popularize
Vocabulary lists containing popularize
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:
Sports columnist Bill Simmons, who helped popularize the format, recently moved his podcasts to the platform in January as part of a deal with Spotify.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 16, 2026
The Roomba wasn’t the first robotic vacuum but became the most well-known, and Greiner is credited with helping to popularize the use of robots as domestic helpers that can reduce household labor.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 9, 2026
Strategy, formerly known as Microstrategy, helped popularize the concept when it started buying large amounts of bitcoin in 2020.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 20, 2026
Sherry Zhu, 23, helped popularize habits like drinking hot water, eating boiled apples and wearing slippers around the house.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 24, 2026
Pilar Ternera was the one who contributed most to popularize that mystification when she conceived the trick of reading the past in cards as she had read the future before.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ultimately, gaming may well end up being what popularizes the metaverse.
From New York Times ● Jan. 19, 2022
Since then more than 15 million people have watched the documentary on Upworthy, which aggregates and popularizes videos and other online content.
From BusinessWeek ● Aug. 1, 2013
He’s been on his own now for a couple of decades, a philosopher-showman with an immense following whose art popularizes Post-Minimalism’s strategies with the use of big, accessible themes.
From New York Times ● Nov. 19, 2010
A man invents a vacuum cleaner and ... a co-conspirator popularizes Venetian blinds, so there will be something else for the vacuum cleaner to do in a jiffy.
From Time Magazine Archive
This part of his work will be found very valuable, as it popularizes a subject which has few attractions for most readers.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 78, April, 1864 by Various
The startup Pickle on Thursday joined the agent craze with a “personal AI you raise,” a concept popularized by Tamagotchis in the 1990s.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 3, 2026
Over the past year, the “TACO” trade has evolved from just a humorous acronym, first popularized by a columnist with the Financial Times, into a major force in markets.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 17, 2026
The “forward-deployed engineer” model, popularized by Palantir, has become the go-to answer for turning AI investments into real business results, with OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and AWS all rolling out similar programs recently.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
He spoke of the “hero’s journey,” a story pattern popularized by 20th century writer and professor Joseph Campbell, and how it inspired George Lucas, a former USC student, to write “Star Wars.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026
The terminology we now use to express this distinction, between primary and secondary qualities, was introduced by Boyle in 1666 and popularized by Locke in 1689.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
It’s easy to adore the star in the mid-to-late 1950s when he’s young and svelte, scandalizing and delighting America with his wiggly hips, popularizing a new sound dubbed rock ‘n’ roll.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 24, 2026
Sydney, “Christy” is the story of Christy Martin, a pioneer in popularizing women’s boxing in the 1980s and 1990s.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 16, 2025
Meanwhile, the investment firm Vanguard has been credited with popularizing low-cost and diversified index funds.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 15, 2025
Kalshi is slowly popularizing markets for things you’d have never thought to bet on five years ago, at least not at scale.
From Slate ● Dec. 10, 2025
The software industry did the first by creating and popularizing a protocol known as SMTP—simple mail transfer protocol—which enabled the exchange of e-mail messages between heterogeneous computer systems.
From "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman
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.
