Tetanize
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To throw (a muscle etc.) into a state of permanent contraction; to cause tetanus in. transitive
"Thus, on tetanizing an only slightly irritable nerve, applied to the deriving cushions by its longitudinal and transverse sections very near to the exciting electrodes, with the alternating currents of the Inversor arranged so that its closing value in the unit of time is brought as near as possible to unity, frequently we get only a trace of negative variation, or none at all, or even a positive deflection; but, repeating the experiment several times, we always get a feeble negative variation."
Example
More examples"Thus, on tetanizing an only slightly irritable nerve, applied to the deriving cushions by its longitudinal and transverse sections very near to the exciting electrodes, with the alternating currents of the Inversor arranged so that its closing value in the unit of time is brought as near as possible to unity, frequently we get only a trace of negative variation, or none at all, or even a positive deflection; but, repeating the experiment several times, we always get a feeble negative variation."
Etymology
From French tétaniser.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.