MEANING
1. To treat someone with serious cruelty or violence.
2. To make someone or something increasingly cruel, harsh, or insensitive.
Use it for
Words that belong together
- brutalize prisoners
- brutalized captives
On the page
The captors brutalized anyone who asked about the missing children.
The report documented how the prisoners had been brutalized.
Nearby words
Related words
Word forms
- Base
- brutalize
- Past tense
- brutalized
- Past participle
- brutalized
- Present participle
- brutalizing
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- brutalize
- Present continuous
- am/is/are brutalizing
- Present perfect
- have/has brutalized
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been brutalizing
- Past
- brutalized
- Past continuous
- was/were brutalizing
- Past perfect
- had brutalized
- Past perfect continuous
- had been brutalizing
- Future
- will brutalize
- Future continuous
- will be brutalizing
- Future perfect
- will have brutalized
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been brutalizing
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
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Usage notes
Primary category: horror. Forms: brutalize; brutalizes; brutalized; brutalized; brutalizing Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Third-person singular: brutalizes.
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