Nuclearizing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Providing a country or force with nuclear weapons or nuclear power plants ; converting something so that it relies on or is shaped by nuclear technology
2. Arming a state or military with atomic weapons ; transforming a region or system through the introduction of nuclear energy or its effects
3. Supplying nuclear arms or reactors to a nation ; making a place or situation dominated by atomic technology or its consequences

Etymology: "Nuclearizing" is the present participle of a verb built from "nuclear" and the suffix "-ize." The suffix has a long pedigree: it passed from Ancient Greek "-izein," through Late Latin "-izare," into Old French as "-iser," and reached Middle English as "-isen." Its use in English words meaning "to make into, or to cause to become, something" is what gives "nuclearize" its sense of equipping a country, region or military with nuclear weapons, or of converting something to nuclear power. The base word "nuclear" comes from "nucleus," the Latin word for a kernel or core, a diminutive of "nux," meaning nut. The sense of a central core or essential part was extended to the atomic nucleus only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, once physicists identified it, so the nuclear sense is recent compared with the Latin root. The verb "nuclearize" is therefore a modern formation, built on that scientific sense of "nuclear" and the older suffix rather than on any ancient word.