# regularization

CEFR C1 · Noun

Source: https://englishreference.com/word/regularization
Updated: 2026-09-28

## Definition

a set of programming techniques that stops an AI model from memorizing its training data too closely, helping it perform better on fresh examples.

For teachers: the introduction of auxiliary constraints, penalties, or stochastic noise into an optimization problem to prevent overfitting and encourage generalizable solutions.

## Examples

- Applying weight regularization prevented the language model from memorizing the training sentences word for word.
- Dropout is a popular form of regularization that randomly silences half of the neurons during each training step.
- L2 weight decay provides isotropic quadratic regularization, pulling overparameterized weight trajectories toward the origin during gradient updates.

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