naturalize

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
19
Words With Friends
22
Letters
10
Pronunciation
/ˈnæt͡ʃəɹəˌlaɪz/
See all 2 pronunciations
/ˈnæt͡ʃəɹəˌlaɪz/ · /ˈnæt͡ʃɹəˌlaɪz/

Definition of naturalize

6 senses · 1 part of speech · etymology included

verb

  1. (transitive)To grant citizenship to someone not born a citizen.
    “Pakche was destroyed and five years later, Kokuryo was also swept away by T’ang and Silla. T’ang set up An-tontu-hu-fu (Government headquarters) at P’ing jang to rule the former territories of Pakche and Kokuryo. Many refugees from these destroyed states came to Japan and became naturalized as Japanese.”
See all 6 definitions

verb

  1. (transitive)To grant citizenship to someone not born a citizen.
    “Pakche was destroyed and five years later, Kokuryo was also swept away by T’ang and Silla. T’ang set up An-tontu-hu-fu (Government headquarters) at P’ing jang to rule the former territories of Pakche and Kokuryo. Many refugees from these destroyed states came to Japan and became naturalized as Japanese.”
  2. (transitive)To acclimatize an animal or plant.
    “Its wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate.”
  3. To make natural.
    “Custom naturalizes labour or study.”
  4. (transitive)To limit explanations of a phenomenon to naturalistic ones and exclude supernatural ones.
  5. (transitive)To make (a word) a natural part of the language, using the native homologue of each phoneme (and often for each morpheme) of the imported word (e.g., native inflections).
    “In English, foreign words are typically written in italics until they are naturalized.”
    “English speakers have naturalized the French word "café".”
    “English orthography often (but not invariably) drops the diacritics from words that it has naturalized from other languages.”
  6. (intransitive, transitive)To study nature.
    “Well, any way, Doctor, we will make an appointment for a whole day here next spring ; we will botanize, herbarize and naturalize to our hearts' content, from morn till night."”

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

From Middle French naturaliser. By surface analysis, natural + -ize.

Words you can make from naturalize

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8-letter words

4 words

7-letter words

16 words

6-letter words

57 words

5-letter words

100 words

4-letter words

22 words

Hooks

2 extensions · 2 back

A single letter you can add to naturalize to make another valid word.

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