stigmatize
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
-
to mark out or describe (as something bad)
-
to mark with a stigma or stigmata
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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stigmatizesimple
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stigmatizessimple
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have stigmatizedperfect
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has stigmatizedperfect
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am stigmatizingprogressive
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are stigmatizingprogressive
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is stigmatizingprogressive
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have been stigmatizingperfect progressive
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has been stigmatizingperfect progressive
Past
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stigmatizedsimple
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had stigmatizedperfect
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was stigmatizingprogressive
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were stigmatizingprogressive
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had been stigmatizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of stigmatize
1575–85; < Medieval Latin stigmatizāre, equivalent to stigmat- ( see stigmatic) + -izāre -ize
Explanation
If you stigmatize someone, you have given that person a label — and it's usually a label that is limiting in some way. In Ancient Greece, a stigma was a brand burned into a slave or a criminal's skin to symbolize disgrace. In the 1500s, the word stigmatize meant literally "to brand or tattoo." Nowadays, to stigmatize is to shame or brand a person in a more symbolic way.
Vocabulary lists containing stigmatize
The Federalist Papers, No. 1 by Alexander Hamilton
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30 GRE Words Beginning with "Q" "R" and "S"
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"The Moustache" and "Who We Really Are"
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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:
Her claim, she said, “is about whether government can use official authority to stigmatize a private citizen without facts, without process, without fairness, accountability, investigation or even an interview — not even a phone call.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2026
Critics of involuntary civil-commitment programs argue they violate civil liberties and stigmatize mental illness.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 11, 2026
The behaviors that Gerdes' bill seeks to stigmatize are — as any person who has ever met a child or been a child could tell you — entirely normal forms of play.
From Salon ● May 12, 2025
Virologists have also come to acknowledge that names can stigmatize people or places.
From Science Magazine ● Apr. 3, 2024
It quickens his vigilance over her own heart, and enlarges his charity toward others, whom reproach perhaps may as unjustly stigmatize.
From Coelebs In Search of a Wife by More, Hannah
The label stigmatizes Cambodia and its citizens, while these criminal networks are transnational and largely foreign-led.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026
China has long had a conservative culture that stigmatizes homosexuality, though it was decriminalized in 1997.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 30, 2024
Young people suffer in silence in a society that still stigmatizes mental health and sharing feelings.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 28, 2024
“Our culture stigmatizes mental illness, and this is being deliberately leveraged in a disease where there is not very good evidence of a mental health connection,” she says.
From Slate ● Jun. 26, 2023
"Alas! yes; he firmly believes in it and stigmatizes the Viscount as the worst of scoundrels."
From Monte-Cristo's Daughter by Flagg, Edmund
Fur "was stigmatized for so long," Jacobs told AFP, posing before a full-length mirror and assessing a potential crop.
From Barron's ● Apr. 24, 2026
Some were less comfortable with the possibility of false positives, since there are often autistic people, or users whose first language isn’t English, whose writing styles are stigmatized as A.I.-like.
From Slate ● Apr. 1, 2026
Since Gilberg opened his practice in 1965, psychiatry and psychotherapy have gone from highly stigmatized secrets to something people acknowledge in award show acceptance speeches.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 13, 2026
This makes sense to me, that when estrangement is a pressing necessity it should not be stigmatized or judged.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2025
There is absolutely nothing abnormal or surprising about a severely stigmatized group embracing their stigma.
From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander
Even a clear definition of UPFs runs the risk of stigmatizing certain healthy foods.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 23, 2026
“These Americans have biological markers of Alzheimer’s disease risk starting in their brain and detectable in their blood. It doesn’t mean all 47 million Americans have a stigmatizing diagnosis like Alzheimer’s.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 10, 2026
Though they may be common, misdemeanors are deeply stigmatizing: 86 percent of employers use criminal background checks in their hiring process.
From Slate ● Aug. 16, 2024
“It’s a way of stigmatizing these groups — a very familiar pattern from the Soviet past,” said political analyst Kornely Kakachia, who directs a think tank in Tbilisi.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 28, 2024
The nationalists, stigmatizing the Rowlatt law as the "Black Cobra Act," were unmeasured in their condemnation.
From The New World of Islam by Stoddard, Lothrop
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.
