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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
institutionalize
verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ What NAFTA did was institutionalize the economic reforms.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
institutionalize

"to put into institutional life" (usually deprecatory), 1905; see institution. Related: Institutionalized. Earlier (1865) it meant "to make into an institution."

Wiktionary
institutionalize

alt. 1 to establish as a normal practice 2 to commit a person to confinement in an institution vb. 1 to establish as a normal practice 2 to commit a person to confinement in an institution

WordNet
institutionalize

v. cause to be admitted; of persons to an institution; "After the second episode, she had to be committed"; "he was committed to prison" [syn: commit, institutionalise, send, charge]

Usage examples of "institutionalize".

Earth had rebounded from its century of institutionalized technophobia and, with the advent of fusion, strong-force catalysis, and other nuclear technologies that had revolutionized just about everything from space transportation to materials extraction and processing, humanity was finally bursting from its home world to pick up again at what should have been the next step back in the years when the Apollo monuments were left on the Moon.

Love, courtship, marriage, babies, grandparenthood, senescence, life-support, heavily monitored institutionalized death, and the survivors left arguing about what to do with the chipped china: the old, old human progression would have flowed like hydrogen through the fuel cell of a new 2025 Wuhan Panda.

We would have to be there to keep the peace, to help build a new political and economic system, to help mend the wounds Saddam has inflicted on Iraqi society, to defend Iraq against predatory neighbors, and to institutionalize all of these changes.

But then it collided with the institutionalized Jevlenese counterfeit being pushed northward, and it was destroyed.

The coming of the World Soul, blessing each and all with intuitions of the Over-Soul, joined each and all in the council and communion of all sentient beings, the community of all souls, likewise institutionalized in structures that guard its preciousness the way the worldcentric rationality is now institutionalized and guarded in law and education and government and community.

Scott institutionalized and propounded as no one ever had before the agency scams and the pulp ethic of the 1930s, but he was as timebound a creature as A.

This sexual dimorphism and the dominance/submission equations do not require institutionalized slavery.

They were being held at an immigrant detention centre, which offended Claudine although she accepted it was the most suitable place: they did, at least, have rooms to themselves and were not being kept in the usual dormitories, although the institutionalized smell of ineffective disinfectant, bad cooking and urine permeated everywhere.

A “mixed econ­omy” disintegrates a country into an institutionalized civil war of pressure groups, each fighting for legislative favors and special privileges at the expense of one another.

With this division of labour the subjugation of farmers by warriors and priests was institutionalized, a subjugation that has never ended.

The largest single federal department, formally recognizing suicide as a critical challenge to the good and welfare of their personnel, took a great leap forward by institutionalizing suicide prevention.

And I also know that in the short run it may be necessary to have operations like the Fire Patrol, but in the long run they're a bad thing, and once they're established and institutionalized it's very hard to get rid of them.

Since Mayhew had succeeded in institutionalizing his reforms, dismantling them would require an institutional framework of its own, and that was what Mueller had dedicated himself to building.

So instead of having the marriage annulled, he tried to have Nettie institutionalized for incompetence, claiming she was a danger to herself and those around her.

The longer they kept her institutionalized, the more she felt estranged from them, and that only made her feel more guilty and confused.