sterilizes

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
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
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