Commonizing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process of making certain practices, ideas, or items universally accessible and prevalent within a society
2. An effort that seeks to standardize unique concepts or commodities to ensure they are available to a broader audience
3. The act of transforming something to be usual or widespread among people

Etymology: "Commonizing" is a plain compound of "common" and the verb-forming suffix "-ize," and its history is largely that of its two parts. "Common" came into English from Anglo-Norman "comun," itself from Latin "communis," meaning shared by or belonging to many, and it reached Middle English as a word about things held in joint possession before it came to mean ordinary or widespread. The suffix has a longer and more winding route: it descends from Ancient Greek verbs ending in "-izein," which made verbs out of nouns and adjectives, passed through Late Latin "-izare," then Middle French "-iser," and entered English in the same family of verbs. Joining "-ize" to "common" produced "commonize," meaning to make something shared, general or widely available, and the present participle "commonizing" describes that process as it happens. The word's meaning therefore follows the older sense of "common" as shared property more closely than its later sense of everyday, ordinary. The result is a verb that turns the idea of something belonging to everyone into an action carried out on a practice, idea or object.

Synonyms: standardizing, normalizing, generalizing, unifying, simplifying

Antonyms: individualizing, specializing, differentiating, diversifying, uniquing