nationalization.

1. The transfer of a privately owned business or industry into state ownership.

2. The process of giving an activity, institution, or identity a national scope or character.

3. The process by which people or territories become organized as a nation.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• nationalization of an industry
• the nationalization of banks
• a policy of nationalization

On the page

The report distinguishes nationalization from tighter regulation of privately owned businesses.

The debate concerns whether nationalization would change incentives as well as ownership.

The historian uses nationalization of culture to describe a new emphasis on shared national identity.

Nationalization of the political debate concerns its national scope, not state ownership of the parties.

The historical discussion defines nationalization here as nation formation rather than transfer of an industry to the state.

Usage notes

Normally uncountable. Nationalizations can identify separate acts of transfer. British nationalisation is a spelling variant. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).