Word.ws English Dictionary

criminalize

criminalize verb: to make (something) a crime; to make illegal under criminal law; to ban.

Verb

criminalize (third-person singular simple present criminalizes, present participle criminalizing, simple past and past participle criminalized)

  1. (transitive) To make (something) a crime; to make illegal under criminal law; to ban.
    • "Ag-gag laws criminalize undercover investigations by prohibiting one or more of three types of behavior: trespass, recording of videos, and failure to submit a video to law enforcement."2015, Gregg Barak, editor, The Routledge International Handbook of the Crimes of the Powerful
    • The Nixon campaign in 1968[…] had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. […] [B]y getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.2016 April 1, Dan Baum, quoting John Ehrlichman, “Legalize It All”, in Harper's Magazine
  2. (transitive) To treat as a criminal.

criminalize meaning in Arabic

criminalize in Arabic

to make something be a crime
جَرَّمَ jarrama

Examples of criminalize in a sentence

  • In response to the international communist movement, the Peace Preservation Law was enacted to criminalize attempts to change the Japanese kokutai.
  • Utah was the first US state to criminalize the use and possession of cannabis.
  • This is probably best termed the criminalizing or policifying of school.

All 12 example sentences with criminalize

Forms of criminalize

third-person singular presentcriminalizes
present participlecriminalizing
past participlecriminalized
pastcriminalized
alternative UKcriminalise

Past tense of criminalize: criminalized

Origin of criminalize

From criminal + -ize.

Words formed from criminalize

Questions about criminalize

What does criminalize mean?
Criminalize means to make (something) a crime; to make illegal under criminal law; to ban.
What is criminalize in Arabic?
Criminalize in Arabic is جَرَّمَ (jarrama). See Criminalize meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is criminalize?
Criminalize is a verb.
What is the past tense of criminalize?
The past tense of criminalize is criminalized.

Words near criminalize in the dictionary

  1. criminalities
  2. criminality
  3. criminalizable
  4. criminalization
  5. criminalizations
  6. criminalize
  7. criminalized
  8. criminalizer
  9. criminalizers
  10. criminalizes
  11. criminalizing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: criminalize (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-criminalize.wav.

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