The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sterilize \Ster"il*ize\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Sterilized; p. pr. & vb. n. Sterilizing.] [Cf. F. st['e]riliser.]
To make sterile or unproductive; to impoverish, as land; to exhaust of fertility. [R.] ``Sterilizing the earth.''
--Woodward.(Biol.) To deprive of the power of reproducing; to render incapable of germination or fecundation; to make sterile.
(Microbiology, Medicine) To destroy all spores or germs in (an organic fluid or mixture) or on (a medical instrument), as by heat, so as to prevent contamination by bacteria or other organisms. A common method of sterilization in laboratories and medical facilities is to heat a liquid sample or an instrument in an autoclave.
To destroy all spores or germs on (a surface) by wetting with an antiseptic liquid, such as an alcoholic solution.
Wiktionary
vb. (en-past of: sterilize)
WordNet
adj. made free from live bacteria or other microorganisms; "sterilized instruments" [syn: antiseptic, sterilised]
made infertile [syn: sterilised]
Usage examples of "sterilized".
He’d already done the inventory: antibiotics, antivirals, immune-system boosters, sterilized bandages, acauterizing laser scalpel, surgical scissors, and a selection of drugs including decongestants, analgesics, and soporifics.
There's just one objection to this sterilized nursery business, though, which she doesn't seem to have detected.
We have to be sure what we bring in can be adequately sterilized, you know, or it will be jettisoned.
Decontamination sterilized the hostel room completely, and we haven't seen anyone else come down with this thing.
That effectively sterilized them, which was all to the good or green dragons would overpopulate the planet.
But Vissan’s codon writer would have allowed the sterilized to circumvent their punishment, and still pass their genes on to the next generation, by simply programming the device to produce chromosomes for them containing their own genetic information.
If Bandra reported Harb’s behavior, her daughters would be sterilized, as, she supposed, would any siblings Harb had, and his parents, if they were still alive…although she supposed Harb’s mother might be spared, since she was presumably postmenopausal.
But it had not yet been irradiated -- sterilized -- when it went up our Juan Doe's nose.
The berserker still wanted to learn more before it sterilized this world.
It might have sterilized Timber, as it did Prairie, hours or days ago.
The world had been sterilized as if by some painstaking medical procedure.
The great destructor had for some time now been passing in a screaming curve, at thousands of kilometers per second, closer to Prairie, the planet it had already sterilized, than to Timber, the one where it had dropped its landers, and where the process of stamping out life had scarcely got underway as yet.
Not just because he now knew I could identify him by his smell, but for the same reason we’ve always sterilized violent males in that particular way.