MEANING
1. To create or do something that keeps a person or event remembered, often as a tribute.
2. To address a person or institution through a formal written statement or petition.
Use it for
preserving the memory of someone who died; honoring victims through a monument or work of art; recording a life so it is not forgotten; creating a lasting tribute to a person or eventIdentifies making remembrance durable through an object, ceremony, writing, or representation. Writing functions: Mourning / Loss.
Words that belong together
- memorialize the dead
- memorialize someone in verse
- a monument memorializing victims
On the page
She memorialized her father in a sequence of short, unsent letters.
The names on the wall memorialize people whose graves were never found.
The inhabitants memorialized the council, asking that the burial ground be preserved.
The account says that the trustees memorialized the government over the threatened closure.
Word forms
- Base
- memorialize
- Past tense
- memorialized
- Past participle
- memorialized
- Present participle
- memorializing
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- memorialize
- Present continuous
- am/is/are memorializing
- Present perfect
- have/has memorialized
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been memorializing
- Past
- memorialized
- Past continuous
- was/were memorializing
- Past perfect
- had memorialized
- Past perfect continuous
- had been memorializing
- Future
- will memorialize
- Future continuous
- will be memorializing
- Future perfect
- will have memorialized
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been memorializing
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Transitive verb: memorialize someone or something. Forms: memorializes; memorialized; memorialized; memorializing. British memorialise is an alternate spelling of this entry, not another word. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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