Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To make free from live bacteria or other microorganisms.
- transitive verb To eliminate the ability of a person or animal to produce offspring, as by altering or removing the reproductive organs.
- transitive verb To make incapable of bearing fruit or germinating.
- transitive verb To render (land) unfruitful.
- transitive verb Economics To place (gold) in safekeeping so as not to affect the supply of money or credit.
- transitive verb To make inoffensive or innocuous.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To render sterile or unproductive in any way; specifically, in bacteriology, to render free from living germs, as by heating or otherwise. Also spelled
sterilise .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb rare To make sterile or unproductive; to impoverish, as land; to exhaust of fertility.
- transitive verb (Biol.) To deprive of the power of reproducing; to render incapable of germination or fecundation; to make sterile.
- transitive verb (Microbiology, Medicine) To destroy all spores or germs in (an organic fluid or mixture) or on (a medical instrument), as by heat, so as to prevent contamination by bacteria or other organisms. A common method of sterilization in laboratories and medical facilities is to heat a liquid sample or an instrument in an autoclave.
- transitive verb To destroy all spores or germs on (a surface) by wetting with an antiseptic liquid, such as an alcoholic solution.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To deprive a male or female the ability to procreate.
- verb To make unable to produce. To make unprofitable.
- verb biology To kill, deactivate (denature), or destroy (break apart) all living, viable microorganisms and spores that would be on a surface, in a fluid, or contained in a compound, such as culture media or a medical product.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb make free from bacteria
- verb make infertile
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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LUI: General Grange, the word sterilize has been used in the process as they go through the southern parts of Lebanon.
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Steel is easy to clean and sterilize, which is invaluable when sharing a toy.
AVN Industry News 2009
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The ministry's intervention has in a sense tossed the ball into the central bank's court in that it is now up to the BOJ, the institution in charge of monetary policy, to decide whether to let all the new yen slosh around in the market, or to absorb the newly injected supply and thereby "sterilize" the intervention.
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He reiterated that the ECB's monetary policy stance won't be affected by the bond-buying because the ECB will be quick to reabsorb money it has paid to banks, possibly by issuing term deposits to "sterilize" the impact of the announced interventions in the euro-zone debt market.
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Normally a central bank would "sterilize" a foreign-exchange intervention, draining from the market the currency sold in the intervention so that overall liquidity reflects the daily supply and demand of the banking system.
Bank of Japan Signals Cooperation on Yen Hiroshi Miwa 2010
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However, IMF conditionalities often require recipient governments to 'sterilize' the injection of additional resources so they do not increase the level of demand in the national economy.
Radhika Balakrishnan: Making the International Monetary Fund Accountable to Human Rights Radhika Balakrishnan 2010
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When the ECB began the program in May, it pledged to "sterilize" its purchases of Greek and other debt in Europe's troubled periphery by accepting an equal amount in interest-bearing deposits from banks, so that the total overall money supply would remain unchanged.
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However, IMF conditionalities often require recipient governments to 'sterilize' the injection of additional resources so they do not increase the level of demand in the national economy.
Making the International Monetary Fund Accountable to Human Rights 2010
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In a desperate attempt to save the Euro, the European Central Bank recently bent the rules by buying Greek bonds on the secondary market rather than lending to the Greek government directly, but the ECB has said it would "sterilize" these purchases by withdrawing an equivalent amount of liquidity from the market, making the deal a wash.
Ellen Brown: Deficit Terrorists Strike in the United Kingdom: United States of America Next? 2010
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Speaking of asses, the bathroom @ our work is busted, so we can't wash our hands unless we walk 1/4 mile to the next-closest one, so now I'm forced to "sterilize" my streaked, shit-wiping-hand with only hand sanitizer.
ruzuzu commented on the word sterilize
"5. Economics To place (gold) in safekeeping so as not to affect the supply of money or credit."
--American Heritage Dictionary
September 15, 2010