Picture a tray of tools going into a steam machine and coming out with nothing alive on them. Something has been done to them, and afterwards nothing can grow, spread or come from them. Every use of sterilize can be seen that way: a surface with no left, a body that can produce no young, a page with nothing dangerous left on it.
The supplied source builds the word from sterile plus -ize, the ending that turns an adjective into an action. So the verb is simply ‘to make sterile’, and because sterile itself covers both ‘with no germs’ and ‘producing nothing’, the verb reaches both of its main senses without any leap.
來源資料把這個字拆成 sterile 加上 -ize，而 -ize 就是把形容詞變成動作的字尾。所以它字面上就是「使某樣東西變成 sterile」。這條線索也解釋了為什麼同一個動詞會同時管消毒和絕育：sterile 這個形容詞本身就同時涵蓋「沒有細菌」和「產不出東西」兩面，動詞只是把它變成一個動作。
Wiktionary entry supplied in this packet (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:497877177): ‘From sterile + -ize.’
Two branches
清乾淨，什麼都不留下
核心畫面的兩種用法：處理一個表面或一份文件，讓上面不再留著會造成麻煩的東西。
verb · B2
To make something completely clean by killing all the tiny living things in it or on it — bacteria, other microbes and their spores — usually with boiling water, steam, chemicals or radiation. Used about baby bottles, medical tools, laboratory glass, food and liquids.
消毒、滅菌
讓生命無法產生
同樣是「處理過之後什麼都出不來」，只是這次處理的對象是活的身體，結果是不會再有下一代。
verb · B2
To perform a medical operation on a person or an animal so that they can no longer have young. Very often used in the passive: be sterilized, have an animal sterilized.
使絕育、結紮