Sterilization

How to spell sterilization

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce sterilization

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sterilization mean?

1. nounThe process of destroying all microorganisms on an object or in a substance to make it completely free of contamination.
2. nounA medical procedure that permanently prevents a person or animal from reproducing.

Sterilization in a sentence

• The clinic follows a strict sterilization routine for every surgical instrument.

• The vet recommended sterilization to stop the stray cats from breeding.

• Proper sterilization of the bottles prevented the milk from spoiling.

• After careful thought, the couple chose sterilization as their permanent form of contraception.

Where does sterilization come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin sterilis, which literally meant 'barren' or 'unfruitful', used of soil that grew nothing and of animals that bore no young. English took in the adjective 'sterile' through French in the sixteenth century, and the verb 'sterilize' was built from it later, originally meaning simply 'to make barren'. The noun 'sterilization' grew from that verb in the nineteenth century, gaining its now-familiar medical sense of freeing something from living microorganisms once germ theory took hold in the work of Pasteur and Lister. The same sterilis root also lies behind the everyday word 'sterling' only by coincidence of sound, not origin, so the link to remember is sterile. The tricky part of the spelling is the unstressed middle, that quiet '-ili-' followed by the '-ization' ending, where writers often lose a vowel or hesitate between z and s.

How the word is built

• steril- (from Latin sterilis: barren, unfruitful)
• -ize (verb-forming suffix)
• -ation (noun of action)

British and American spelling

Sterilization is the American spelling. British English spells it sterilisation.