Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com
Showing results for spiritualize. Search instead for Spiritualized.
Synonyms

spiritualize

American  
[spir-i-choo-uh-lahyz] / ˈspɪr ɪ tʃu əˌlaɪz /
especially British, spiritualise

verb (used with object)

spiritualized, spiritualizing
  1. to make spiritual.

  2. to invest with a spiritual meaning.


spiritualize British  
/ ˈspɪrɪtjʊəˌlaɪz /

verb

  1. (tr) to make spiritual or infuse with spiritual content

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Etymology

Origin of spiritualize

First recorded in 1625–35; spiritual + -ize

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Though I admit, I myself am tempted to spiritualize decomposition.

From New York Times Mar. 31, 2018

In a country without antique monuments, the image of Arcadia serves to spiritualize the past.

From Time Magazine Archive

Skeptical of progress, Cole painted the landscape as Arcadia, which served to spiritualize the past in a land without antique monuments.

From Time Magazine Archive

The monk Athenaय perceives in a vision that his mission is to spiritualize Thaïs, to make her the bride of Christ.

From Time Magazine Archive

Whilst, therefore, the theory of Heraclitus seems to materialize mind, it may, with equal fairness, be said to spiritualize matter.

From Christianity and Greek Philosophy or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles by Cocker, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)

This production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” seems like a gift from the other side, that mysterious, creative realm where history is spiritualized.

From Los Angeles Times Nov. 1, 2025

In their churches, food banks, recovery services and community meetings, local NAR leaders offer individual and highly spiritualized explanations for this country’s systemic crises of poverty, homelessness, hunger and addiction.

From Salon Jul. 21, 2025

Maybe they grew rapidly because her suffering was spiritualized away.

From Salon May 7, 2022

When he says, "Every spiritualized state grows out of what was originally a non-spiritual one," he is thinking of some sudden stepping-up of the state rather than the slow process called growth.

From Time Magazine Archive

So, working hand in hand, they become one, while the search for knowledge, thus spiritualized, becomes the search for beauty always inspired by love.

From Browning and His Century by Clarke, Helen Archibald

Catholicism has given Waugh the unifying influence and the spiritualizing force whose workings are evident in Brideshead.

From Time Magazine Archive

Be thou a cause for the illumining of hearts and spiritualizing of souls.

From Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas by `Abdu'l-Bahá

The spiritualizing influence of the school as a social unit is, however, not confined to the classroom.

From The Teacher Essays and Addresses on Education by Palmer, Alice Freeman

All worthy education means the spiritualizing of the body.

From What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern Soul by Swain, Richard la Rue

Mr Gladstone’s spiritualizing touch was still to be laid upon the party that he was yet to join.

From Social Transformations of the Victorian Age A Survey of Court and Country by Escott, T. H. S. (Thomas Hay Sweet)

Vocabulary.com logo
by dictionary.com

Join 12,000,000 vocabulary learners

Start learning new words today on VocabTrainer.
You'll remember them forever.

Start training