Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To reduce to an infantile state or condition: "It creates a crisis that infantilizes them—causes grown men to squabble like kids about trivial things” ( New Yorker).
- v. To treat or condescend to as if still a young child: "The Victorian physician infantilized his patient” ( Judith Moore).
Wiktionary
Etymologies
- infantile + -ize (“make into”) (Wiktionary)
Examples
“What qkslvrwolf would have us do is infantilize the military – he would have us accept “I was only following orders” as a valid defense.”
“Damon blames part of this on influential childrearing experts such as David Elkind and Penelope Leach, whose approaches may encourage adults to infantilize children on the pretext of protecting them.”
“It is most often to impute naivete and ineffectualness, i.e. the term is used to infantilize its target.”
“Because, you know, the shift from “that race is innately inferior so we must exterminate them” to “that race is innately inferior so we must infantilize them” shows how far progressives have progressed in their racism.”
“Even the ones who are all like "I'm an intellectual, confident, non-insane human being begging to be taken seriously in a society that has a tendency to caricature and infantilize adult women.”
The Huffington Post: Silpa Kovvali: How Mindy Kaling Made Me Sadsies
“Isn't this inconsistent with Kidz Bop's mission to infantilize everything it touches?”
The Huffington Post: James Kotecki: Kidz Bop: The Worst Thing Ever?
“It neutralizes a transmitter the dictators of Sloven use to infantilize the rest of the colony.”
“Above all, questions themselves convey respect: I honor you when I refuse to infantilize your mind.”
The Huffington Post: Irshad Manji: The Quranic Solution To The 9/11 Abomination
“At the same time, they're are bravely shaking things up in the American Muslim community, forcing Muslims -- men and women both -- to begin questioning age-old ideologies that infantilize women.”
The Huffington Post: Red Room: The True Threat Brewing Inside American-Muslim Communities: Women
“She wants neither to give him impossible tasks nor infantilize him.”
The Wall Street Journal: For Wounded Vet, Love Pierces the Fog of War
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘infantilize’.
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People are Scum
words that one may enjoy using to describe other people or their actions
degenerate, reprobate, scapegrace, capricious, sycophant, arbitrary, infernal, abominable, iniquitous, nefarious, philistine, sadistic and 39 more...
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slumry's Words
cattywampus, ingratiate, lackadaisical, exactitude, exfoliate, fulminate, circumnavigation, circuitous, debride, sidle, sequester, chicory and 1002 more...
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wurds i lyke
bombastic, bon mot, spitfire, portmanteau, occlude, chimera, smitten, enigma, tete-a-tete, assignation, punk-ass, bourgeoisie and 29 more...
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Words
Words I like
flapdoodle, fungible, edify, malarkey, hearsay, persnickety, tchotchke, penultimate, flummery, stultify, dun, complain and 53 more...
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Ranty Words
Good words to use in a ranty blog.
infantilize, pathetic, proselytize, fatalism, florid, vapid, proof-text, purism, pablum
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reikicara's list
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Saoirse's Words
eccumenical, allocated, precarious, edification, psilocybin, precipice, precipitousness, gimbal lock, priapism, misanthropy, fruition, apothecary and 30 more...
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