v. [f. STERILE a. + -IZE. Cf. F. stériliser.]
1. trans. To cause to be unfruitful; to destroy the fertility of.
1695. Woodward, Nat. Hist. Earth, II. 101. Why therefore may we not as well suppose the other part of the Sentence, the Sterilizing the Earth, was also suspended?
1737. Savage, Of Publ. Spirit, 204. No, no—such wars do thou, Ambition, wage! Go, sterilize the fertile with thy rage! Whole nations to depopulate is thine.
1810. Southey, in Edin. Ann. Reg., I. I. 147. An experiment to sterilize the country for one year.
1891. Spectator, 4 April, 468/2. Intrinsically, Gambia is worth far more to the French than the French right to sterilise the French shore of Newfoundland is to the English.
absol. 1910. Margoliouth, in Expositor, March, 216. The practice of sowing with salt, in order to sterilize, is alluded to in the Old Testament.
2. To deprive of fecundity; to render incapable of producing offspring.
1828. in Webster.
1905, 1910. [implied in STERILIZATION].
3. Biol. To render (organs) sterile.
1891. M. E. Pope, in Hardwicke’s Sci.-Gossip, XXVII. 77/1. Its ray-florets—the outer circle—besides doubling or semi-sterilising themselves, have attained a broad stripe of yellowish white up each strap-shaped corolla.
4. fig. To make mentally or spiritually barren; to render unproductive, unprofitable or useless; to deprive of result.
1880. J. A. Symonds, in H. F. Brown, Biog. (1895), II. 168. Men who might have written excellent books are sterilised by starting with fastidious conceits.
1887. Chamb. Jrnl., 19 Feb., 114/1. That prodigious find of 1882 seems to have almost sterilised 1883 so far as treasure-trove is concerned.
1911. F. Harrison, Autobiog. Mem., II. xxiii. 60. M. Grévy being sterilised by office,… power fell to M. Gambetta.
5. To render free from micro-organisms.
1878. Tyndall, Fragm. Sci. (1879), II. 297. Schwann … sterilised the flask by boiling.
1899. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VIII. 69. The milk should be sterilised.
absol. 1877. Tyndall, Ess. Floating Matter Air (1881), 229. In the one case five minutes’ action completely sterilizes.
Hence Sterilized ppl. a.; Sterilizing vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1846. Blackw. Mag., LX. 13. The sudden sterilizing of districts previously fruitful.
1847. H. Miller, First Impr. Eng., xi. (1857), 177. New crops of them … appear as fast as the surface is relieved from its sterilizing burden.
1866. Alger, Solit. Nat. & Man, III. 155. Nothing is so sterilizing as retirement, when [etc.].
1877. Tyndall, Ess. Floating Matter Air (1881), 133. A sterilized infusion … remained sterile.
1880. ‘Vernon Lee,’ Stud. Italy, IV. i. 146. He had the intense, blind, sterilising love of antiquity of the men of the fifteenth century.
1888. Sat. Rev., 2 June, 641. The chief certain result … was the sterilizing … of French political capacity.
1891. G. S. Woodhead, Bacteria, 399. Sterilized vessels for the reception of various media.
