idealize

Forms

• idealise (UK)

Etymology

It is formed from English ideal + -ize,^[2][3][4][5] although Merriam-Webster takes it as probably from German idealisieren.^[6][7] The OED compares French idéaliser, recorded from 1795.^[2] Ideal is from Late Latin ideālis (“existing in idea”),^[8][5] from Latin idea (“Platonic idea, archetype”),^[5][8] taken from Ancient Greek ἰδέα (idéa, “form, the look of a thing”),^[5] from the root Proto-Indo-European *weid- (“to see”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

To represent something in an ideal form, or to form ideals: 1786, in P. H. Maty's piece on Meiners's history of religion in the New Review.^[2] Merriam-Webster also gives 1786 but applies it to the transitive sense,^[6] and Etymonline dates “make ideal, consider as ideal” to the same year.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The verb appeared when ideal was gaining its modern force: the adjective had meant “conceived as perfect” since the 1610s, and the noun for a perfect person or thing dates only from 1796.^[5] The transitive use, making something ideal or treating it as a model of perfection, follows in 1795, in W. Taylor in the Monthly Review.^[2] The past participle idealized is recorded from 1817.^[9] Modern dictionaries stress that what is idealized is shown as better than it really is.^[10][11]

Timeline

• 1786 – to represent something in an ideal form; to form ideals.^[2]
• 1795 – to make ideal; to regard as an ideal of perfection.^[2]
• 1817 – the participle idealized.^[9]

Meanings

Verb

1. To regard or represent a person or thing as perfect, or as better than in reality: Many emigrants idealize the village they left.^[12][13][10]
2. To give something an ideal form or value.^[6][12]
3. To treat an artistic subject idealistically.^[6]
4. To form ideals, or to work idealistically.^[6][12][14]

Word family

• idealization
• idealizer
• overidealize

Related words

• ideate
• idea
• ideal
• idealism

Usage notes

The spelling idealise is also used, especially in British English.^[6][4][12]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Gove, Philip Babcock, ed. (1961), Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam
8. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ a b Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
14. ^ The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers