parasitize
verb
parasitize is a verb meaning “To live on or in a host organism as a parasite” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-A-R-A-S-I-T-I-Z-E, and it appears about once in every 27 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does parasitize mean?
verb
- 1
To live on or in a host organism as a parasite.
- 2
To behave as a parasite more generally.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce parasitize?
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-parasitize.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of parasitize
- parasitizes present, singular, he/she/it
- parasitizing participle, present
- parasitized participle, past
- parasitise UK
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is parasitize?
Parasitize appears about once in every 27 million words in written English, the 157,761st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Parasitize in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense live off a host:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | parasiter |
| German | parasitieren, schmarotzen |
| Portuguese | parasitar |
| Spanish | parasitar |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does parasitize come from?
From parasite + -ize.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).