Word.ws English Dictionary

memorialize

Syllables: me·mo·ri·al·ize/məˈmɔːɹi.əˌlaɪz/

memorialize verb: to provide a memorial for someone; to commemorate.

Verb

memorialize (third-person singular simple present memorializes, present participle memorializing, simple past and past participle memorialized)

  1. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To provide a memorial for someone; to commemorate.
    • In this passage, Andromaque sees Astyanax only through the memorializing lens of his attribution to Hector, his status as "gage."2008, Roland Racevskis, Tragic Passages: Jean Racine's Art of the Threshold, page 85
    • President Emmanuel Macron decided this summer that 46 years after her death, Baker would become only the sixth woman to be memorialised in the Panthéon in a ceremony on 30 November – the anniversary of the marriage to Jean Lion that allowed her to acquire French nationality.2021 November 28, Jon Henley, “Dancer, singer … spy: France’s Panthéon to honour Josephine Baker”, in The Guardian
  2. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive, social media) To convert (someone’s profile) into a memorial site/page (e.g. on Facebook).
    • Facebook says people with memorialized accounts do not appear in advertisements or birthday reminders on the site and are also excluded from the People You May Know list of friend suggestions.2015 May 20, J. D. Biersdorfer, “Unlike You, Your Facebook Account Can Be Immortal”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  3. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To create a written record of a meeting or conversation.
    • Most of the time, the National Security Council — the foreign policy arm of the White House — memorializes presidential phone or video calls with foreign heads of state on the so-called TNet system, the officials said.2019 October 1, Charlie Savage, Matthew Rosenberg and Adam Goldman, “The Extra-Secret White House Computer System, Explained”, in The New York Times
  4. (British, English, Oxford, US, dated, transitive) To petition with a memorial, or statement of facts.
    • Why, you'll—you'll ask till they tell you. Then you'll memorialize that Department (according to regular forms which you'll find out) for leave to memorialize this Department.1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, →OCLC

Forms of memorialize

third-person singular presentmemorializes
present participlememorializing
past participlememorialized
pastmemorialized
alternative formmemorialise

Past tense of memorialize: memorialized

Origin of memorialize

From memorial + -ize.

Words formed from memorialize

Questions about memorialize

What does memorialize mean?
Memorialize means to provide a memorial for someone; to commemorate.
What part of speech is memorialize?
Memorialize is a verb.
How do you pronounce memorialize?
Memorialize is pronounced /məˈmɔːɹi.əˌlaɪz/.
What is the past tense of memorialize?
The past tense of memorialize is memorialized.

Words near memorialize in the dictionary

  1. memorialistic
  2. memorialists
  3. memorializable
  4. memorialization
  5. memorializations
  6. memorialize
  7. memorialized
  8. memorializer
  9. memorializers
  10. memorializes
  11. memorializing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: memorialize (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-memorialize.wav.

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