Tenderize is from tender + -ize. Tender is from Old French tendre, from Latin tener ('soft, delicate, young'). Important recorded forms include tener (Latin). Morphologically, the word preserves a built structure whose named elements carry the historical sense into English. The modern sense continues the older lexical line without requiring a separate origin. In current use it covers to make meat tender by beating, marinating, or cooking. The wider family includes derived forms such as tenderizer, tenderized, and tenderization and related words such as tender and tenderness.