enolize

enolize verb: to become an enol or enolate, often through isomerization.

Verb

enolize (third-person singular simple present enolizes, present participle enolizing, simple past and past participle enolized)

(intransitive) To become an enol or enolate, often through isomerization.
- As in base-catalyzed reactions, crossed reactions between two carbonyl compounds each of which can enolize are likely to result in a mixture of four products.1993, Richard O.C. Norman, James M. Coxon, Principles of Organic Synthesis, 3rd Edition, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 258
- These differences have been attributed to the ability of free saccharides to enolize in basic media and to the resistance of hydrazones to do so, as detailed next.2000, Derek Horton, Advances in Carbohydrate Chemistry and Biochemistry, Gulf Professional Publishing, →ISBN, page 185
(transitive) To convert into an enol or enolate.
- It was thus proposed that the matched pK values of the dienolate and of Tyr-14 permitted the hydrogen bond between them to become a very strong one, thus providing the energy to enolize the substrate and form the unstable intermediate.1999, Enzyme Kinetics and Mechanisms, Part E, Energetics of Enzyme Catalysis, Academic Press, →ISBN, page 23

Carboxylic acids that enolize easily will also react without a catalyst present.2005, Thomas Laue, Andreas Plagens, Named Organic Reactions, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 160:
If we condense two species where one cannot enolize, then this principle reduces our number of primary products to two.2014, Penny Chaloner, Organic Chemistry: A Mechanistic Approach, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 798:
Pyruvate is known to enolize rapidly under the conditions employed by Oshima and Tamiya; in contrast, the a-keto analogs of a number of other amino acids enolize at much slower rates.2016, Paul D. Boyer, Henry Lardy, Karl Myrbäck, Group Transfer Syntheses Coupled to ATP Cleavage, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 217:

third-person singular present	enolizes
present participle	enolizing
past participle	enolized
past	enolized
alternative form	enolise

From enol + -ize.

What does enolize mean?: Enolize means to become an enol or enolate, often through isomerization.
How do you use enolize in a sentence?: Carboxylic acids that enolize easily will also react without a catalyst present.
What part of speech is enolize?: Enolize is a verb.
What is the past tense of enolize?: The past tense of enolize is enolized.

Adapted from Wiktionary: enolize (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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