revolutionize
Americanverb (used with object)
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revolutionizes,
present (3rd person singular)
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revolutionized,
past participle, past
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revolutionizing
present participle
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to bring about a revolution in; effect a radical change in.
to revolutionize petroleum refining methods.
-
to subject to a political revolution.
verb
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to bring about a radical change in
science has revolutionized civilization
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to inspire or infect with revolutionary ideas
they revolutionized the common soldiers
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to cause a revolution in (a country, etc)
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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revolutionizesimple
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revolutionizessimple
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have revolutionizedperfect
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has revolutionizedperfect
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am revolutionizingprogressive
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are revolutionizingprogressive
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is revolutionizingprogressive
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have been revolutionizingperfect progressive
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has been revolutionizingperfect progressive
Past
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revolutionizedsimple
-
had revolutionizedperfect
-
was revolutionizingprogressive
-
were revolutionizingprogressive
-
had been revolutionizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of revolutionize
First recorded in 1790–1800; revolution + -ize
Explanation
Revolutionize, a verb, means "to make a major change," like in the 1990s, when the Internet revolutionized how people communicated, got information and even did their jobs. Things were never the same again. Use revolutionize to describe something that is completely transformed. Originally, it meant "to bring about sweeping political change," like people who band together and fight to revolutionize a nation, with the end result being a new party in power or new philosophies about things like land ownership or tax collection put in place. In time, it also came to mean even nonpolitical change, like the digital music player, which revolutionized how people get and listen to music.
Vocabulary lists containing revolutionize
100 SAT words Beginning with "R"
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"Remarks at the Dedication of the Aerospace Medical Health Center" by John F. Kennedy
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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:
Jeff Bezos saw how the new technology could revolutionize retailing again.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 2, 2026
"Altermagnets could completely revolutionize the way we transport information, but to confirm if this elegant theory is true, we need experiments that identify altermagnets and confirm they behave the way scientists predict."
From Science Daily ● Jun. 23, 2026
The wine-country startup wanted to revolutionize the cultivation of grapes and other fruit with $100,000 robotractors, but the technology didn’t work well enough.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 15, 2026
SpaceX pioneered reusable rockets and built Starlink, a space-based broadband service poised to revolutionize mobile connectivity.
From Barron's ● Jun. 12, 2026
He improved the air pump, which was later to revolutionize the mining industry, and the “magic lantern,” the ancestor of the slide projector.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
"This research revolutionizes our understanding of the jugal bone in snake and non-snake lizards," said Michael Caldwell, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and a co-author on the study.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 24, 2026
Maybe that’s the real magic of a tool like this: not that it revolutionizes your cooking, but that it makes the most ordinary meal feel new again.
From Salon ● Aug. 19, 2025
Their solution: Negotiate a settlement with the plaintiffs that revolutionizes college sports by requiring the major football-playing schools to share roughly $20 million annually with athletes.
From Seattle Times ● May 20, 2024
Jane Goodall, a young and untrained woman, challenges the male dominated scientific consensus of her time with her chimpanzee research and revolutionizes people’s understanding of the natural world.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 17, 2020
The spread of Roman influence around the borders of the Mediterranean produced a tendency to homogeneous thought eminently dangerous to the many forms of faith professed by so many different people. and revolutionizes religious ideas.
From History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) Revised Edition by Draper, John William
Detroit: Henry Ford’s integration of moving parts and stationary labor in 1913 revolutionized global manufacturing, turning the automobile from a luxury into a middle-class staple.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
Founded in 2002 in El Segundo, SpaceX has revolutionized the aerospace industy by developing the reusable Falcon 9 rocket that has radically lowered launch costs.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2026
Millions of Americans have tried the drugs, which have revolutionized the way physicians treat weight loss, but personalizing who gets which drugs is still a long way off — if it ever happens.
From MarketWatch ● May 18, 2026
Launched in 2020, PIX has revolutionized payments in Brazil and surpassed the use of credit and debit cards, with seven billion transactions in January alone, according to the central bank.
From Barron's ● May 6, 2026
The McDonald brothers’ Speedee Service System revolutionized the restaurant business.
From "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal" by Eric Schlosser
Many students were enthralled by John Maynard Keynes, whose work was revolutionizing the field.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026
Plus, what it’s like to use an e-hiking exoskeleton and how ground drones are revolutionizing warfare.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 24, 2026
Ted Turner created CNN in 1980, revolutionizing the way America, and the world, got their news, and then went on to become one of the most prominent business leaders and philanthropists of his era.
From Barron's ● May 6, 2026
"For all the talk about how AI is revolutionizing science, there are very few examples where something fundamentally new has been found directly by an AI system," Nemenman says.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 23, 2026
But Bertillonage was already being displaced by a more efficient method of identification that was revolutionizing the world of scientific detection: fingerprinting.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
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.
