Word.ws English Dictionary

grammaticalise

grammaticalise is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of grammaticalize.

Meaning of grammaticalize

Verb

grammaticalize (third-person singular simple present grammaticalizes, present participle grammaticalizing, simple past and past participle grammaticalized)

  1. (transitive) To make grammatical.
    • Enhanced output arises when learners grammaticalize their output either through the use of more advanced interlanguage forms or of target language forms.1999, Rod Ellis, Learning a Second Language through Interaction, John Benjamins Publishing, →ISBN, page 174
  2. (transitive) To integrate into a system of grammar; to make (something such as a constraint) an element or rule of grammar, to cause (something) to be required by grammar.
    • That is, the cooccurrence restrictions do cross intervening specifications for the same feature. […] In the model, a linguistic constraint against homorganicity (which may grammaticalize constraints on motor programming) is enforced on pairs […]1993, North Eastern Linguistic Society. Meeting, Proceedings of NELS.
  3. (transitive) To cause (a word, a suffix, etc) to undergo grammaticalization.
    • Similarly to other classifier languages in South America and elsewhere, a number of nouns grammaticalize as classifiers and are also used as derivational suffixes, e.g. *-maka 'stretch (of cloth)' (from *maka “hammock'), […]2002, Aleksandra I͡Urʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd, Language Contact in Amazonia, Oxford University Press on Demand, →ISBN, page 292

Forms of grammaticalise

third-person singular presentgrammaticalises
present participlegrammaticalising
past participlegrammaticalised
pastgrammaticalised

Questions about grammaticalise

What is grammaticalise the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of?
Grammaticalise is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of grammaticalize.

Words near grammaticalise in the dictionary

  1. grammatical persons
  2. grammatical word
  3. grammatical words
  4. grammaticalisation
  5. grammaticalisations
  6. grammaticalise
  7. grammaticalised
  8. grammaticalises
  9. grammaticalising
  10. grammaticalities
  11. grammaticality

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grammaticalise (page history and authors); grammaticalize (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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Cite this entry: “grammaticalise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grammaticalise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.