🧠 To justify ⚙️ To make efficient 🤔 To use logic ➗ To simplify (math)

to rationalize

1 8.0

Remove square roots from the top or bottom of a fraction

verb
/ˈræʃənəˌlaɪz/

Specialized

: racionalizar

After some pretty taxing computational work, he could rationalize the subtle differences in nonpolar contacts that the inhibitors had with the active site as contributing to their potencies.

Examples

How can the Dahlquist criterion for stickiness be rationalized?

Academic text (1999)
So rationalizing the radical doesn't help.
One of the methods, Yeah, well, no, we didn't rationalize the denominator in that chapter.
To simplify the fraction, we need to rationalize the denominator by eliminating the square root.
In algebra, you often rationalize the expression to make it easier to solve.
To find a solution, we learned how to rationalize the numerator when dealing with complex numbers.

Phrasal Verbs

to rationalize away

1 7.9

Try to explain strange events with normal reasons to dismiss other ideas

Surface Forms

rationalize infinitive

rationalized past

rationalized past participle

rationalizing present participle

rationalizes third person singular

Morphology

rationalize = rational (semi-transparent) = rational + ize

Formally 'rational' + '-ize' is clear, but the specialized mathematical meaning ('remove irrational quantities') is domain-specific and not obvious to an average learner.

Etymology

Rationalize comes from the Latin root ratio, which means 'reason' or 'calculation'. In math, to rationalize means to remove square roots from the bottom of a fraction so the result is a rational number and is easier to calculate.