Amortize
//əˈmɔːtaɪz// verb
verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
Verb
- 1 To alienate (property) in mortmain. transitive
- 2 liquidate gradually wordnet
- 3 To wipe out (a debt, liability etc.) gradually or in installments. transitive
"extraordinary borrowing had been so extensive, Joly de Fleury reckoned, that even if it were amortized over the following decade, the state would still be running an annual deficit of over 50 million livres."
- 4 To even out the costs of running an algorithm over many iterations, so that high-cost iterations are much less frequent than low-cost iterations, which lowers the average running time. transitive
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"extraordinary borrowing had been so extensive, Joly de Fleury reckoned, that even if it were amortized over the following decade, the state would still be running an annual deficit of over 50 million livres."
Etymology
From Middle English amortisen, from Old French amortir (via the stem amortiss-), from Vulgar Latin *admortīre, derived from Latin mortuus (“dead”).
Related phrases
More for "amortize"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.