naturalize

present singular third person naturalizes · participle present naturalizing · participle past naturalized · past naturalized · alternative naturalise

1. transitiveTo grant citizenship to someone not born a citizen.

   1 more example

   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.

   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

2. transitiveTo acclimatize an animal or plant.

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

   1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 8, in The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC

3. To make natural.

   Custom naturalizes labour or study.

4. transitiveTo limit explanations of a phenomenon to naturalistic ones and exclude supernatural ones.
5. transitivehuman sciencesTo 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).

   English speakers have naturalized the French word "café".

   2 more examples

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

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

   Synonyms: paronymize

6. intransitivetransitiveTo study nature.

   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."

   1854, Somerton, The heiress of Somerton, page 226