Word.ws English Dictionary

privatise

privatise is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of privatize.

Meaning of privatize

Verb

privatize (third-person singular simple present privatizes, present participle privatizing, simple past and past participle privatized)

  1. (British, English, Oxford, US) To release government control (of a business or industry) to private industry.
    Synonyms:
    denationalize
  2. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To render (a variable, etc.) private in scope.
    • If the compiler allocates a privatized variable to a register, it must examine whether the variable is live after the termination of the while-loop.1997, David Sehr, Utpal Banerjee, David Gelernter, Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing: 9th International Workshop, page 184
  3. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive, uncommon) To render a thought or an idea, private in scope.
    • The neoliberal, privatizing version of health in which everyone is responsible for themselves, despite disparities in resources.2018, Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism, page 129

Synonyms of privatise

Antonyms

Forms of privatise

third-person singular presentprivatises
present participleprivatising
past participleprivatised
pastprivatised

Origin of privatise

From private + -ise.

Words formed from privatise

Questions about privatise

What is privatise the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of?
Privatise is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of privatize.

Words near privatise in the dictionary

  1. privation
  2. privational
  3. privations
  4. privatisation
  5. privatisations
  6. privatise
  7. privatised
  8. privatiser
  9. privatisers
  10. privatises
  11. privatising

Source and license

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