Weaponize

//ˈwɛpənaɪz// verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To make into a weapon. British, English, Oxford, US, transitive

    "Anything can be weaponized. A big enough rock, dropped from a sufficient height, is a very good weapon."

  2. 2
    make into or use as a weapon or a potential weapon wordnet
  3. 3
    To make more effective as a weapon. British, English, Oxford, US, transitive

    "To weaponize anthrax it is made more distributable, not more virulent."

Example

More examples

"Ziri is gathering information in order to weaponize it against you."

Etymology

From weapon + -ize. First use appears c. 1938. See cite below.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.