metabolize

• (UK) metabolise

From Ancient Greek μετᾰβολή (metabolḗ, “change, mutation”) + -ize.

• IPA^(key): /mɪˈtæbəˌlaɪz/
• Hyphenation: me‧tab‧o‧lize

metabolize (third-person singular simple present metabolizes, present participle metabolizing, simple past and past participle metabolized)

1. (biology, intransitive) To undergo metabolism.
2. (biology, transitive) To cause a substance to undergo metabolism.
   • 2004, Walter C. Willett, “News About What You Drink”, in Mother Earth News:

     Among the many types of juice, grapefruit stands out from the pack because it changes the way some people absorb and metabolize different drugs.

   • 2004–05, Dustin Stephens, Robert Dudley, “The Drunken Monkey Hypothesis”, in Journal of Natural History, page 43:

     The genes in question encode two enzymes that metabolize alcohol and its breakdown products; the two enzymes are known as alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase.

3. (biology, transitive) To produce a substance using metabolism.
4. (by extension, transitive) To absorb and process as if by metabolism.
   • 1887 March 18, L. H., “Zoölogy in the college course”, in Science, volume IX, number 215, page 264:

     We believe this to be the true way to teach zoölogy, for we doubt the value to a man of a mass of indefinite ill-digested text-book information. Occasionally an omnivore can take in every thin, and digest and so metabolize it as to organize it into healthy mental tissue. They are, however, the few.

• metabolic

• catabolize

metabolize

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