sensitize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to render sensitive.
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Photography. to render (a film or the like) sensitive to light or other forms of radiant energy.
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Immunology. to render sensitive to an antigenic substance.
verb (used without object)
verb
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to make or become sensitive
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(tr) to render (an individual) sensitive to a drug, allergen, etc
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(tr) photog to make (a material) sensitive to light or to other actinic radiation, esp to light of a particular colour, by coating it with a photographic emulsion often containing special chemicals, such as dyes
Other Word Forms
- antisensitizer noun
- antisensitizing adjective
- nonsensitized adjective
- nonsensitizing adjective
- oversensitize verb
- resensitize verb (used with object)
- sensitization noun
- sensitizer noun
- unsensitize verb (used with object)
Etymology
Origin of sensitize
First recorded in 1855–60; sensit(ive) + -ize
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.
In patients with ATM alterations, which should sensitize tumors to ATR inhibitors, the ORR increased to 26.1%.
From Science Daily • Feb. 13, 2024
While cheetahs usually keep their distance from humans, the state forest department has engaged a network of influential people to be cheetah “mitras” — Hindi for friend — to sensitize villagers to their presence.
From New York Times • Sep. 16, 2022
Or you can sensitize yourself to the volume of the space around things; to the emptiness, the absence.
From Washington Post • Jan. 7, 2022
In their death throes, the betas could release signature self-antigens that sensitize nearby immune cells, causing them to go after other beta cells, because such cells have similar antigen signatures.
From Scientific American • Sep. 14, 2021
Sometimes she would go into the workshop and help Arcadio sensitize the daguerreotype plates with an efficiency and a tenderness that ended up by confusing him.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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.
