immobilize

• immobilise

From French immobiliser, equivalent to immobile +‎ -ize.

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immobilize (third-person singular simple present immobilizes, present participle immobilizing, simple past and past participle immobilized) (transitive)

1. To render motionless; to stop moving or stop from moving.

   It is best to immobilize the injury until a doctor can examine it.

   • 1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 70:

     […] two Russian armies would advance into East Prussia, one westward from the Niemen, the other northward from the Narew, with the object of encircling and immobilizing all enemy forces there.

   • 2011, Sam Zhang, Biological and Biomedical Coatings Handbook: Applications, page 343:

     Zinc oxide is biosafe and, therefore, there are no toxic effects for biomedical applications that immobilize and modify biomolecules (Kumar and Shen, 2008).

   • 2012, Rob Benvie, Maintenance‎^[1]:

     This is how Alzheimer's transforms encyclopedians into vegetables, how Parkinson's immobilizes triatheletes.

   • 2024 December 25, Elaine S. Povich, “Self-driving cars aren’t here yet, but states are getting the rules ready”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)‎^[2]:

     Fully autonomous vehicles have raised safety concerns. California enacted a law this year that will, among other things, require manufacturers to continuously monitor every autonomous vehicle on the road and designate a remote human operator to immobilize a vehicle if necessary.

2. To render incapable of action.
   • 1975 December 27, “Editorial”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 26, page 4:

     It's clear from these [budget] cuts that the MCAD is virtually immobilized as an effective organization for at least the next year.

3. To modify a surface such that things will not stick to it
4. (finance) To tie up a capital: make a capital investment that makes that capital unavailable.

   Don't immobilize your capital in aging accounts.

• (render motionless): freeze, halt; See also Thesaurus:immobilize or Thesaurus:stop
• (modify a surface):

• immobilization
• immobilizer
• photoimmobilize