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.
From the word’s history
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.’
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