Word.ws English Dictionary

operationalise

operationalise is the alternative spelling of operationalize.

Meaning of operationalize

Verb

operationalize (third-person singular simple present operationalizes, present participle operationalizing, simple past and past participle operationalized)

  1. (transitive) To make operational.
    • I have a lot of sexual fantasies that I'm never going to operationalize. I enjoy them just as fantasies.1981 August 15, Nancy Wechsler, Gayle Rubin, Pat Califia, “Sadomasochism: Fears, Facts, Fantasies”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 5, page 6
  2. (transitive) To define (a concept) in such a way that it can be practically measured.
    • To operationalize a concept is to identify those variables in terms of which the phenomenon represented by the concept can be accurately observed.1956, Ernest Greenwood, “New Directions in Delinquency Research: A Commentary on a Study by Bernard Lander”, in Social Service Review, volume 30, number 2, page 152

Forms of operationalise

third-person singular presentoperationalises
present participleoperationalising
past participleoperationalised
pastoperationalised

Origin of operationalise

From operational + -ise.

Questions about operationalise

What is operationalise the alternative spelling of?
Operationalise is the alternative spelling of operationalize.

Words near operationalise in the dictionary

  1. operational taxonomic units
  2. operationalisability
  3. operationalisable
  4. operationalisation
  5. operationalisations
  6. operationalise
  7. operationalised
  8. operationalises
  9. operationalising
  10. operationalism
  11. operationalisms

Source and license

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