Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com

emotionalize

American  
[ih-moh-shuh-nl-ahyz] / ɪˈmoʊ ʃə nlˌaɪz /
especially British, emotionalise

verb (used with object)

emotionalized, emotionalizing
  1. to make emotional; treat as a matter of emotion.


emotionalize British  
/ ɪˈməʊʃənəˌlaɪz /

verb

  1. (tr) to make emotional; subject to emotional treatment

"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 emotionalize

First recorded in 1875–80; emotional + -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:

The casting of deaf and hearing actors — one to embody and emotionalize a character, the other to sing, speak and jam — fails to harmonize into a resonant or even intelligible interpretation.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 11, 2024

But we anthropomorphize, assuming they emotionalize identically to us, and that’s the mistake.

From National Geographic ● Nov. 25, 2017

You've tried to emotionalize what should not be an emotional issue.

From Time Magazine Archive

It is a good idea of Santayana that "the function of poetry is to emotionalize philosophy."

From The Last Harvest by John Burroughs

The case is different when the teacher of fact happens to find in art, in real literature, some picture or detail with which to emotionalize and beautify his fact.

From Literature in the Elementary School by Porter Lander MacClintock

More in the manner of Pelleas et Melisande, they talk back and forth naturally in the intimate, emotionalized musical speech for which Mary Garden has a particular genius.

From Time Magazine Archive

The play is remembered as four long acts of highly emotionalized mistaken identity.

From Time Magazine Archive

In this same emotionalized vein the concert proceeded through Russian church music and folk songs.

From Time Magazine Archive

Her singing, as ever, was curiously uneven and husky, a weird combination of song and emotionalized speech.

From Time Magazine Archive

Rather it is a copy of that inner and highly emotionalized vision of the artist which it is granted to him to see and recreate when he is released from certain practical reactions.

From Ancient Art and Ritual by Jane Ellen Harrison

“It’s all about visualizing, emotionalizing and imagining that you’re like an otter or a seal.”

From Los Angeles Times ● May 30, 2019

But it is Steinbeck’s best novel… It is “great” in the way that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was great — because it is inspired propaganda, half tract, half human-interest story, emotionalizing a great theme.

From Time ● Apr. 14, 2015

Here is the way the dramatist, emotionalizing the description of the novel, turned it into dramatic illustration of Jean’s ignorance of the condition of the country.

From Dramatic Technique by George Pierce Baker

The whole keyboard of the imagination may be used to serve this emotionalizing of nature.

From The Photoplay A Psychological Study by Hugo Münsterberg

It was, though, not love that was emotionalizing her then.

From The Perfume of Eros: A Fifth Avenue Incident by Edgar Saltus

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

Get a word

Vocabulary.com logo
by dictionary.com

Just like flashcards, but way more fun

Don't take our word for it. Leave the boring studying behind and join VocabTrainer today. You'll learn even faster and never look back.

Take me to Vocabulary.com