Definition of "amortize"

amortize

/əˈmɔːtaɪz/

verb
third-person singular simple present amortizes, present participle amortizing, simple past and past participle amortized
1. (transitive) To alienate (property) in mortmain.
2. (transitive) To wipe out (a debt, liability etc.) gradually or in installments.
  Quotations
  extraordinary borrowing had been so extensive, Joly de Fleury reckoned, that even if it were amortized over the following decade, the state would still be running an annual deficit of over 50 million livres.
  2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 318
3. (transitive, computer science) To even out the costs of running an algorithm over many iterations, so that high-cost iterations are much less frequent than low-cost iterations, which lowers the average running time.