privatize
verb
Simple meaning
Change from governmental to private control or ownership.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
privuhtyzSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpɹɪvətaɪz
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
economics
To release government control (of a business or industry) to private industry.
economics
Change from governmental to private control or ownership
computingtransitive
To render (a variable, etc.) private in scope.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To release government control (of a business or industry) to private industry.
Used this way, privatize is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in business or professional and finance or economics contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Business/professional
- Finance/economics
- Government/politics
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use privatize
- “The oil industry was privatized.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Changing something from state to private ownership or control.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- privatizationnoun
- utilitynoun
- electricitynoun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.