Word.ws English Dictionary

posterized

posterized is the simple past and past participle of posterize.

Meaning of posterize

Verb

posterize (third-person singular simple present posterizes, present participle posterizing, simple past and past participle posterized)

  1. (transitive) To inadvertently or intentionally reduce the number of colours in (a photograph or other image), changing a continuous gradation of tone to several regions of fewer tones with abrupt changes from one tone to another.
  2. (Canada, US, slang, transitive) To score a slam dunk in basketball against (one or more opposing players) by leaping over them; also (by extension, sports, slang), to score a goal, a point, etc., in some other sport against (one or more opposing players) in a spectacular manner.
    • Probably, [Sam] Perkins just wanted to get out of the way and not be "posterized," which is what happens when the dunkee is humiliated by the dunker. But [Michael] Jordan thought Perkins, his college teammate, would try to block the dunk, so he switched the ball from his right to his left hand at...1991 June 7, Michael Wilbon, “Great shot! Jordan’s best amazingly goes one better”, in The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on...
  3. (intransitive) To inadvertently or intentionally reduce the number of colours in a photograph or other image, changing a continuous gradation of tone to several regions of fewer tones with abrupt changes from one tone to another.

Questions about posterized

What is posterized the simple past and past participle of?
Posterized is the simple past and past participle of posterize.

Words near posterized in the dictionary

  1. posterities
  2. posterity
  3. posterization
  4. posterizations
  5. posterize
  6. posterized
  7. posterizes
  8. posterizing
  9. posterlike
  10. postern
  11. posterns

Source and license

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