regularize
This term carries a strong connotation of bringing order to chaos or legality to an illicit state. In administrative and legal contexts, it suggests a formal transition from an irregular or precarious status to one that is officially recognized and stable. It is frequently used in bureaucratic settings to describe the legalization of residency or the standardization of haphazard procedures.
In technical fields like statistics and machine learning, the word shifts toward a mathematical meaning of constraint. Here, it describes the act of smoothing a function or limiting a model's complexity to ensure it performs well on unseen data, rather than simply memorizing the training set. This usage is highly specialized and distinct from the general administrative sense.
Meanings
To make something conform to a standard, rule, or law, often by correcting irregularities or legalizing a status.
The government is taking steps to regularize the status of undocumented immigrants.
To make a process, payment, or occurrence happen at fixed, predictable intervals.
Examples
The government introduced a new program to regularize the status of undocumented workers.
The company is trying to regularize its accounting procedures to meet international standards.