sterilize

Verb

sterilize (third-person singular simple present sterilizes, present participle sterilizing, simple past and past participle sterilized)

1. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To deprive of the ability to procreate.
   • If monogeny is determined exclusively by a cytoplasmic factor, then it is easy to see that the factor will either die out (if it causes arrhenogeny) or will become fixed and thereby sterilize the population (if it causes thelygeny).1982, Graham Bell, The Masterpiece of Nature :: The Evolution and Genetics of Sexuality, page 441
   • In China, the issue of forced abortions has resurfaced with the allegations by escaped activist Chen Guangcheng, but the outgoing premier Wen Jiabao has publicly called for a ban not only on forced abortion, but also of “fetus gender identification.” Nevertheless, many women who have abortions in...2013, Al Gore, “The Reinvention of Life and Death”, in The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change, New York: Random House, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 234
2. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To make unable to produce; to make unprofitable.
3. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To kill, deactivate (denature), or destroy (break apart) all living, viable microorganisms and spores on a surface, in a fluid, or contained in a compound, such as culture media or a medical product.
   • One machine in which Mr. Taylor takes special pride is a salmon canner, which engulfs a whole salmon, decapitates and decaudates it, skins it, blows out its viscera, cuts it into pieces, deposits them in the can, sterilizes them […]1937, Technology Review, volume 40, page 100
   • The bottled juice must be heated to a temperature and for a time sufficient to attain a sterilizing temperature at the coolest point, usually the center of the bottle.1938, C.B. Hutchison, S.B. Freeborn, Toward Better Agriculture: Report of the Agricultural Experiment Station of the University of California, page 44
4. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To render a planet like Earth permanently uninhabitable to all life, including even microbes, causing their complete extinction.
5. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To redact (a document), removing classified or sensitive material.
   • […] (minus, of course, any information that might identify the agent and other operational personnel), or he might code it or "sterilize" it, and reward the foreign station chief in some other way.1974, Miles Copeland, Without cloak or dagger: the truth about the new espionage, page 141
   • The same phenomenon is also detectable in the records of the meetings of NATO committees: the priority of avoiding any manifestation of internal disagreements led to the production of 'sterilized' records of discussions which evidently were significantly more lively than shown in the official...2014, Evanthis Hatzivassiliou, NATO and Western Perceptions of the Soviet Bloc, page 2