Skip to main content
PlainSpell

personalize

/ˈpɝ.sə.nəˌlaɪz/verb

personalize is a verb meaning “To adapt something to the needs or tastes of an individual” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-E-R-S-O-N-A-L-I-Z-E and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 2 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does personalize mean?

verb

  1. 1

    BritishUSTo adapt something to the needs or tastes of an individual.

  2. 2

    BritishUSTo represent something abstract as a person; to embody.

  3. 3

    BritishUSTo imbue something with one's personality.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce personalize?

  • UK /ˈpɜː.sə.nə.laɪz/
  • UK /ˈpɜːs.nə.laɪz/
  • US /ˈpɝ.sə.nəˌlaɪz/

Personalize has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-personalize.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of personalize

  • personalizes present, singular, he/she/it
  • personalizing participle, present
  • personalized participle, past
  • personalise

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is personalize?

Personalize appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 42,145th 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).

Personalize in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense to adapt to an individual:

LanguageWords
Frenchpersonnaliser
Germanpersonalisieren
Portuguesepersonalizar
Spanishpersonalizar

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 personalize come from?

From personal + -ize.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).