Word.ws English Dictionary

initialise

initialise is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of initialize.

Meaning of initialize

Verb

initialize (third-person singular simple present initializes, present participle initializing, simple past and past participle initialized)

  1. (British, English, Oxford, US) To assign initial values to something.
  2. (British, English, Oxford, US) To assign an initial value to a variable.
  3. (British, English, Oxford, US) To format a storage medium prior to use.
  4. (British, English, Oxford, US) To prepare any hardware (such as a printer or scanner) for use.
  5. (British, English, Oxford, US, dated) To reduce (a phrase) to an initialism, or a word to its initial.

Forms of initialise

third-person singular presentinitialises
present participleinitialising
past participleinitialised
pastinitialised

Words formed from initialise

Questions about initialise

What is initialise the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of?
Initialise is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of initialize.

Words near initialise in the dictionary

  1. initialese
  2. initialing
  3. initialings
  4. initialisation
  5. initialisations
  6. initialise
  7. initialised
  8. initialiser
  9. initialisers
  10. initialises
  11. initialising

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: initialise (page history and authors); initialize (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: “initialise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/initialise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.