externalize
Americanverb (used with object)
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externalizes,
present (3rd person singular)
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externalized,
past participle, past
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externalizing
present participle
verb
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to make external; give outward shape to
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psychol to attribute (one's own feelings) to one's surroundings
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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externalizesimple
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externalizessimple
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have externalizedperfect
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has externalizedperfect
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am externalizingprogressive
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are externalizingprogressive
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is externalizingprogressive
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have been externalizingperfect progressive
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has been externalizingperfect progressive
Past
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externalizedsimple
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had externalizedperfect
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was externalizingprogressive
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were externalizingprogressive
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had been externalizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of externalize
Explanation
If you externalize something, you show or express it on the outside. You can externalize your anger at the poor quality of the food at the restaurant, but the other patrons would probably prefer you didn't rant at the waiter in front of them — so would the waiter. Psychologically speaking, externalize is the opposite of internalize. You can externalize your fears in a constructive way by writing about them or drawing them, which will help you make sense of them. This is a much better solution than internalizing your fears, because you need to face them and deal with them once and for all. If you keep them bottled up, it is just like to cause you anxiety.
Vocabulary lists containing externalize
The Shining
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The River
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Zlata’s Diary
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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 economic pain is worse, but Iran has found a way during the course of the war to externalize that pain,” Batmanghelidj said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 28, 2026
For Rodrigo, music is a vehicle for “expressing those feelings that are really hard to externalize, or that you feel aren’t societally acceptable to externalize,” she told the New York Times.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2023
The trick, then, was to try to find new ways to externalize that drama for a modern TV audience, as he imagined Rice might have wanted.
From New York Times ● Sep. 30, 2022
"The agribusiness system has relied on the ability to externalize these costs to downstream communities," said Tom Zimnicki, the Agricultural & Restoration Policy Director for the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
From Salon ● Jul. 14, 2022
“That’s what I mean. You have to tell me everything, externalize it all for me, so I can write it.”
From "The River" by Gary Paulsen
Phthalate exposure is just one way the plastics industry externalizes harms.
From Salon ● Feb. 9, 2024
Gorbis also developed a “crooked mirror” that exaggerates patients’ distortions, which externalizes the distorted self-image.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 22, 2023
The chimera, as Diel writes, externalizes a certain danger, “in the form of a monster encountered by chance,” that “chimerical enemy” that “every man carries secretly within himself ... the devouring monster.”
From New York Times ● Feb. 16, 2023
I realized this past summer that this friend is self-absorbed and externalizes blame, and that I tend to feel drained in her presence.
From Slate ● Apr. 10, 2017
It is the sight that externalizes the ‘meaty’ eye.
From Carmen Ariza by Charles Francis Stocking
The solution to some kind of environmental damage was simply externalized to somewhere else.
From Salon ● May 3, 2024
Migration control “is almost completely externalized to Tunisia,” Megerisi said.
From New York Times ● Apr. 5, 2023
In “Ikiru,” the great Takashi Shimura externalized his character’s desperation with enormous, wide-open eyes and a drooping stare.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 21, 2022
That trick relies on incalculable losses that can be externalized from the financial arithmetic, but not from the world itself.
From Slate ● Nov. 26, 2022
Here was her humanity externalized, and all her longing—for freedom, from disgust, from the confines of her metal cage.
From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor
Much of the current research focuses on depression, while other important outcomes such as anxiety, stress, externalizing behaviors, self-esteem and aggression have received far less attention.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 29, 2026
“Boeing has gleaned billions of dollars in profits over the past several decades partly through externalizing its waste disposal costs by dumping wastes into the Lower Duwamish River,” the Port said in its claim.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 24, 2023
Tradition is prime among the many wonderful, terrible traits that make us human, with no example externalizing this quite so well as the holiday meal.
From Salon ● Jun. 29, 2023
She does so by externalizing the book’s subtle allusions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 16, 2022
You are continually building, and so externalizing in your body conditions most akin to the thoughts and emotions you entertain.
From In Tune with the Infinite or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty by Ralph Waldo Trine
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
