verb (used with object), pas·teur·ized, pas·teur·iz·ing.
to expose (a food, as milk, cheese, yogurt, beer, or wine) to an elevated temperature for a period of time sufficient to destroy certain microorganisms, as those that can produce disease or cause spoilage or undesirable fermentation of food, without radically altering taste or quality.
a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.
a stew of meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
1881, after Louis Pasteur (1822-95), Fr. chemist and bacteriologist, who invented the process of heating food, milk, wine, etc., to kill most of the micro-organisms in it; distinguished from sterilization, which involves killing all of them.