amortize

• amortise (British spelling)

From Middle English amortisen, from Old French amortir (via the stem amortiss-), from Vulgar Latin *admortīre, derived from Latin mortuus (“dead”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /əˈmɔːtaɪz/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈæmɚtaɪz/, /əˈmɔɹtaɪz/

amortize (third-person singular simple present amortizes, present participle amortizing, simple past and past participle amortized)

1. (real estate, property law, transitive) To alienate (property) in mortmain.
2. (business, finance, transitive) To wipe out (a debt, liability etc.) gradually or in installments.
   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 318:

     extraordinary borrowing had been so extensive, Joly de Fleury reckoned, that even if it were amortized over the following decade, the state would still be running an annual deficit of over 50 million livres.

3. (transitive, computer science) To even out the costs of running an algorithm over many iterations, so that high-cost iterations are much less frequent than low-cost iterations, which lowers the average running time.

• accrue

• Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “amortize”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

• atomizer

amortize

1. inflection of amortizar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative