immobilize

English

From French immobiliser, equivalent to immobile +‎ -ize.

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

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.
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.
To modify a surface such that things will not stick to it
(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):

render motionless