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PlainSpell

serialize

se·ri·al·ize/ˈsɪɹiəlaɪz/verb

serialize is a verb meaning “To write a television program, novel, or other form of entertainment as a sequence of shorter works with a common story” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-E-R-I-A-L-I-Z-E and has 4 syllables (se·ri·al·ize), and it appears about once in every 17 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does serialize mean?

verb

  1. 1

    To write a television program, novel, or other form of entertainment as a sequence of shorter works with a common story.

  2. 2

    To publish (a book, play, etc.) in regular instalments, e.g. in a magazine.

  3. 3

    To convert an object into a sequence of bytes that can later be converted back into an object with equivalent properties.

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

How do you pronounce serialize?

  • US /ˈsɪɹiəlaɪz/
  • UK /ˈsɪəɹiəlaɪz/

Serialize has 4 syllables, split se·ri·al·ize in writing.

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

Forms of serialize

  • serializes present, singular, he/she/it
  • serializing participle, present
  • serialized participle, past
  • serialise UK

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

How common is serialize?

Serialize appears about once in every 17 million words in written English, the 122,704th 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).

Serialize in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Spanishserializar, seriar (write entertainment as a sequence of shorter…)
Frenchsérialiser (convert an object into a byte sequence that can…)
Germanserialisieren (convert an object into a byte sequence that can…)

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 serialize come from?

From serial + -ize.

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