Word.ws English Dictionary

humanise

humanise is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of humanize.

Meaning of humanize

Verb (1)

humanize (third-person singular simple present humanizes, present participle humanizing, simple past and past participle humanized)

  1. (transitive) To make human; to give or cause to have the fundamental properties of a human.
    • VVas it the buſineſs of magic to humanize our natures with compaſſion, forgiveneſs, and all the inſtances of the moſt extenſive charity?a. 1720 (date written), Joseph Addison, “Section II. The Power and Wisdom of God in the Creation.”, in The Evidences of the Christian Religion, […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson […], published 1730...
  2. (transitive) To make sympathetic or relatable.
    • I think they would try to humanize the worst villains in history out of their fear that the audience might not like the central character.2000, Robert J. Emery, The directors: in their own words, volume 2, page 267
  3. (transitive) To convert into something human or belonging to humans.
    • to humanize vaccine lymph
  4. (transitive, artificial intelligence) To make (an AI-generated text) seem as though it was written by a human.

Verb (2)

humanize (third-person singular simple present humanizes, present participle humanizing, simple past and past participle humanized)

  1. (transitive) To make humane.
    • In China, as in India, Buddhism humanized the government and the people. It was a Chinese Emperor, Ming-Ti (a.d. 58-76), converted to Buddhism that abolished the penalty of death.1932, Mariadas Ruthnaswamy, The making of the state, page 102
  2. (intransitive) To become humane or civilized.

Forms of humanise

third-person singular presenthumanises
present participlehumanising
past participlehumanised
pasthumanised

Origin of humanise

From human + -ise.

Words formed from humanise

Questions about humanise

What is humanise the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of?
Humanise is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of humanize.

Words near humanise in the dictionary

  1. humanimal
  2. humanin
  3. humaning
  4. humanisation
  5. humanisations
  6. humanise
  7. humanised
  8. humaniser
  9. humanisers
  10. humanises
  11. humanish

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: humanise (page history and authors); humanize (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:

Cite this entry: “humanise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/humanise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.