“Sterilized” or “Sterilised”—What's the difference?

Usage by country

Where each spelling is used

Of the 12 countries below, 5 prefer “sterilized” and 4 prefer “sterilised”. Usage levels are out of 100; the more common spelling in each country is in bold.

Usage level out of 100 (if available).
Country	sterilized	sterilised	Preference
United States	96	4	“sterilized”
United Kingdom	24	76	“sterilised”
India	79	21	“sterilized”
Philippines	98	2	“sterilized”
Canada	92	8	“sterilized”
Australia	37	63	“sterilised”
Liberia	0	0	Not enough data
Ireland	33	67	“sterilised”
New Zealand	42	58	“sterilised”
Jamaica	0	0	Not enough data
Trinidad & Tobago	100	0	“sterilized”
Guyana	0	0	Not enough data

Usage

Examples in context

Real sentences for each spelling. Hover an example to copy it.

“sterilized”

…from methane, ammonia and water, sterilized all materials, and baked the…
…multiple reports of HIV-positive women sterilized without their informed consent and…
…one-year follow-up of 585 men sterilized at vasectomy camps in Shibpur…
…Huntington's Disease could also be sterilized.
…most of them women, were sterilized.
…that reportedly left a woman sterilized without her consent.
…B, is a post-garden world, sterilized by the greenhouse effect.
…in their sex lives he sterilized more than 600 prisoners by…
…400 mixed-race children were forcibly sterilized in the Rhineland by 1938.
The extraction process is extensively sterilized, and the culture can be…

“sterilised”

…to the individuals who were sterilised under the law.
…the time had to be sterilised immediately before use.
…bandages allowed them to be sterilised quickly in an open fire.
…as amoebic infection, from poorly sterilised equipment.
…of medical-grade plastic, which is sterilised at the time of manufacture…
Sterilising dressings, and keeping them sterilised, was a problem in the
…II, over 400,000 individuals were sterilised under the German law and…
…malt extract is stabilized and sterilised during boiling.
sterilised needles for IV or IM
…that high temperatures would have sterilised the British supply of smallpox.

Examples are Wikipedia snippets under the CC ShareAlike 3.0 license.

Too much to remember?

Looking for a tool that handles this for you wherever you write?

Install Sapling Try the grammar checker