naturalize

• naturalise

From Middle French naturaliser. By surface analysis, natural +‎ -ize.[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˈnæt͡ʃəɹəˌlaɪz/, /ˈnæt͡ʃɹəˌlaɪz/

• Audio (Southern England)

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naturalize (third-person singular simple present naturalizes, present participle naturalizing, simple past and past participle naturalized)

1. To grant citizenship to someone not born a citizen.
   • 1964, Japanese National Commission for UNESCO, “History”, in Japan: Its Land, People and Culture‎, Revised edition, Printing Bureau, Ministry of Finance, →OCLC, page 20, column 2:

     Pakche was destroyed and five years later, Kokuryo was also swept away by T’ang and Silla. T’ang set up An-tontu-hu-fu (Government headquarters) at P’ing jang to rule the former territories of Pakche and Kokuryo. Many refugees from these destroyed states came to Japan and became naturalized as Japanese.

2. To acclimatize an animal or plant.
   • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 8, in The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC:

     Its wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate.

3. To make natural

   Custom naturalizes labour or study.

4. To limit explanations of a phenomenon to naturalistic ones and exclude supernatural ones.
5. (linguistics) To make (a word) a natural part of the language, using the native homologue of each phoneme (and often for each morpheme) of the imported word (e.g., native inflections).

   In English, foreign words are typically written in italics until they are naturalized.

   English speakers have naturalized the French word "café".

   English orthography often (but not invariably) drops the diacritics from words that it has naturalized from other languages.

6. To study nature.
   • 1854, Somerton, The heiress of Somerton, page 226:

     Well, any way, Doctor, we will make an appointment for a whole day here next spring ; we will botanize, herbarize and naturalize to our hearts' content, from morn till night."

• denaturalize, exile (verb), expatriate (verb), other (verb), supernaturalize

• naturalized (adj), naturalization

• (linguistics): approximation, hyperforeignism, loanword, unadapted borrowing