Definitions

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • verb Chiefly Brit. Same as idealize.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Alternative spelling of idealize.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb form ideals
  • verb consider or render as ideal

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French idéaliser

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Examples

  • This is to "idealise" in the right sense of the word.

    Poetry Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903

  • To "idealise" in the true sense is to disengage an "idea" of all that is trivial or impertinent or transient or disturbing, and present it to men in its clearest outline, so that its own proper form shines in on the intelligence, as you would wipe away from a discovered statue all stains or accretions of mud or moss or fungus, to release and reveal its true beauty.

    Poetry Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903

  • The word "idealise," which is the more commonly used, has unfortunately two meanings, a true and a false; and, again unfortunately, the false prevails in vulgar use.

    Poetry Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903

  • You restore the lost youth of manhood by idealisation, and you compel your readers to 'idealise' with you -- but 'to idealise' is rather a dangerous verb!

    Innocent : her fancy and his fact Marie Corelli 1889

  • You idealise your attitude, you go far back in time, you enmesh yourself in theories and generalisations, you ride your imagination proudly, in order to reconcile yourself to something which suggests itself as more ideal than that for which the unreasoning heart hungers.

    The Kempton-Wace Letters 2010

  • If we call it beautiful, then we seek to idealise poverty and coercion.

    On Herta Müller « Tales from the Reading Room 2010

  • To idealise, therefore, is not to be blind, but to be far-seeing.

    The Kempton-Wace Letters 2010

  • He told the Palestinian daily Al Hayat Al Jadida: "We cannot expect a people under occupation to have textbooks which idealise, praise and express love for their occupiers."

    Daoud Kuttab: Israeli Tourism Maps Annex Palestinian Lands and Omit Palestinian Cities 2010

  • The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise answered to his response: "Israeli texts do not 'idealise, praise and express love' for the Palestinians, but they do not malign or disseminate hatred against them either."

    Daoud Kuttab: Israeli Tourism Maps Annex Palestinian Lands and Omit Palestinian Cities 2010

  • German philosophy — the tendency to universalise and idealise the I and consciousness.

    Psychology in Search of Psyches: Friedrich Schelling, Gotthilf Schubert and the Obscurities of the Romantic Soul 2008

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