American spelling variant of heathenise; to make or become heathen, or to convert to non-Christian beliefs.
From 'heathen' plus the suffix '-ize' (American spelling; comes from Greek '-izein'). This is the North American English variant of the British 'heathenise,' both emerging in the 16th-17th centuries.
The existence of both '-ise' and '-ize' endings is itself a story of language politics: '-ize' was actually common in British English until the 19th century, when Oxford dictionaries standardized '-ise' as British and '-ize' as American.
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