Word.ws English Dictionary

maternalize

maternalize verb: to make maternal.

Verb

maternalize (third-person singular simple present maternalizes, present participle maternalizing, simple past and past participle maternalized)

  1. (transitive) To make maternal.
    • Women's professional status is frequently mediated by overt efforts to "beautify" or maternalize them, or both.2003, Rory Cooke Dicker, Alison Piepmeier, Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century

Forms of maternalize

third-person singular presentmaternalizes
present participlematernalizing
past participlematernalized
pastmaternalized

Origin of maternalize

From maternal + -ize.

Questions about maternalize

What does maternalize mean?
Maternalize means to make maternal.
What part of speech is maternalize?
Maternalize is a verb.
What is the past tense of maternalize?
The past tense of maternalize is maternalized.

Words near maternalize in the dictionary

  1. maternalistic
  2. maternalistically
  3. maternalists
  4. maternality
  5. maternalization
  6. maternalize
  7. maternalized
  8. maternalizes
  9. maternalizing
  10. maternall
  11. maternally

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: maternalize (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: “maternalize.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/maternalize. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.