hospitalize
Americanverb (used with object)
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
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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
Mabel Alvarez Benedicks told the AP that agents repeatedly ignored pleas to hospitalize her medically fragile daughter as she felt pain in her bones, struggled to breathe and was unable to walk.
From Washington Times ● May 22, 2023
I cannot get her out of this steel block unless I hospitalize her, perhaps operate.
From Sinister Paradise by Williams, Robert Moore
“Omicron still hospitalizes and kills lots of people,” Geoghegan says.
From Science Magazine ● Jan. 11, 2024
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
“If we see a rise in cases or hospitalizes, we are going to come back,” Adams said.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 4, 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
Nearly 400 people have been hospitalized with measles in the U.S. this year and last, and three have died.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
Michigan officials have reported more than 7,600 sickened residents, including 160 people who were hospitalized for their symptoms.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
While no deaths have been reported, 94 people have been hospitalized.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1,600 people fell ill after eating at Taco Bell; we know of at least 141 who have been hospitalized.
From Slate ● Jul. 17, 2026
Only 2 percent of the workers in the U.S.-led project were hospitalized at any one time, compared with 30 percent for the French.
From "An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793" by Jim Murphy
And only a small percentage of people are masking or taking other precautions in public despite a new wave of covid, flu, and respiratory syncytial virus infections hospitalizing and killing seniors.
From Salon ● Feb. 12, 2024
Unlike the fall-winter surge, which devastated Southern California’s denser urban communities, the latest Delta wave hammered the state’s rural and agricultural areas — infecting, hospitalizing and killing residents of some counties at unprecedented levels.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2021
“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
By the end of 2020, nearly 10% of Congress had contracted the coronavirus, temporarily hospitalizing at least two lawmakers and forcing a number of lawmakers to quarantine.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 2, 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
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.
