externalize
Americanverb (used with object)
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
Under my leadership, this council won’t externalize our policymaking authority.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 4, 2024
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
“Your head’s not for managing, reminding, prioritizing. You need to externalize all that.”
From New York Times ● Apr. 4, 2023
“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
As Irene’s tension mounts, the film externalizes it through other symbols: a loudly ticking grandfather clock, a pot of water boiling over and even her breaking a teapot at a midday social in her home.
From New York Times ● Nov. 19, 2021
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 expression of "inner states" but it externalizes itself in terms of the outer world.
From The Gate of Appreciation Studies in the Relation of Art to Life by Noyes, Carleton Eldredge
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
The son isn’t around, save the one behind the camera, a curious and affecting blend of narratively externalized guilt and filmmaking devotion that only deepens as the reality of her situation sinks in.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 13, 2022
With Coleman and women like her — and there are many women like her — it's more useful to think of externalized misogyny.
From Salon ● Mar. 15, 2022
But, Dargis wrote, Pitt’s “soulful, nuanced performance — which becomes incrementally more externalized and visible, as if McBride were shedding a false face — holds the film together even when it starts to fray.”
From New York Times ● Feb. 14, 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
“A Fantastic Woman” is still a movie that is externalizing a trans experience, because why is she a fantastic woman?
From Salon ● Feb. 24, 2025
How do we avoid forms of tourism that can advertise low prices because they are exploiting workers, using the dirtiest fuel available, and externalizing the costs of pollution?
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 23, 2022
She does so by externalizing the book’s subtle allusions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 16, 2022
When the entire aesthetic and externalizing process has been completed, when a beautiful expression has been produced and fixed in a definite physical material, what is meant by judging it?
From Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic by Croce, Benedetto
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.
