glamorize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to make glamorous.
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to glorify or romanticize.
an adventure film that tended to glamorize war.
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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glamorizationnoun
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glamorizernoun
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overglamorizeverb (used with object)
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overglamourizeverb (used with object)
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unglamorizedadjective
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unglamourizedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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glamorizesimple
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glamorizessimple
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have glamorizedperfect
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has glamorizedperfect
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am glamorizingprogressive
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are glamorizingprogressive
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is glamorizingprogressive
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have been glamorizingperfect progressive
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has been glamorizingperfect progressive
Past
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glamorizedsimple
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had glamorizedperfect
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was glamorizingprogressive
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were glamorizingprogressive
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had been glamorizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of glamorize
An Americanism dating back to 1935–40; glamor ( def. ) + -ize
Explanation
When you make something seem more attractive or exciting than it really is, you glamorize it. Movies you've seen might glamorize camping, but after three days with no shower, you may find it less enticing. Making anything appear glamorous is to glamorize it. So you can glamorize your dog by dressing him in a fancy velvet collar studded with jewels. It's more common, however, to use this verb for the act of making difficult or dangerous things seem very alluring. A book might glamorize a climb to the top of Mt. Everest (which is actually very dangerous), and an old movie might glamorize the life of a gangster (which was decidedly less luxurious once he was convicted and imprisoned).
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:
Wang recognizes it’s her ability to be both inside and outside Hong Kong’s discourse that allows her to glamorize the daily realities of locals.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 25, 2024
Michael Mann’s Ferrari may glamorize speed, but Mann isn’t shy about showing its consequences.
From Slate ● Nov. 27, 2023
We glamorize overworking and we privilege isolation, as if eating food and meeting up with friends or coworkers are just weekends and nights things.
From Salon ● Aug. 26, 2023
But unlike DIS — who do so without discernible politics and tend to glamorize a sense of existential resignation — Kline is stridently and sincerely polemical.
From New York Times ● Mar. 17, 2023
“I suppose I did glamorize it a bit,” he admitted.
From "Hollow City" by Ransom Riggs
The book is also a love letter to activism, which isn’t to say it glamorizes it.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 10, 2022
Ms. McKinney compared its appeal to that of Van Life — a cultural movement that glamorizes living in a small space.
From New York Times ● Dec. 20, 2021
With a fresh fade in denim-on-denim or in a suave black-and-yellow rayon shirt, Tre glamorizes himself as anxious teenagers often do: boldly, loudly.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 17, 2021
Jones said she’s aware that some critics of the franchise believe the series glamorizes teen pregnancy to young viewers.
From Fox News ● Oct. 26, 2019
He’s a young Mark Zuckerberg lookalike who glamorizes entrepreneurship.
From Salon ● Apr. 22, 2017
"It's very glamorized, and it feels very professional and fun," said Grace Stark, a world 100m bronze medallist in Tokyo last month.
From Barron's ● Oct. 10, 2025
Lestat’s figment doubles as his love’s guilty conscience and a glamorized memory.
From Salon ● May 26, 2024
The Gucci brand made billions turning the movement of everyday life into something to be coveted, to be gilded and to be glamorized.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 2023
These women aren’t glamorized by Brathwaite’s lens, and I wish the exhibition had made more explicit their roles as co-developers of the movement.
From New York Times ● Nov. 23, 2022
Now that he had gone, these things, so long subdued by his presence, were glamorized in his wake.
From "Sula" by Toni Morrison
Bayona’s film seeks to honor the story and strays away from glamorizing or sensationalizing the horrors the passengers and crew members endured.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 2, 2024
“It wasn’t about glamorizing or promoting anything except telling her story that then could be a vehicle for others to have these very difficult conversations.”
From Washington Times ● Dec. 11, 2022
That show became a hit for what many would consider the wrong reasons, in that it is accused of glamorizing its repugnant main subject.
From Salon ● Oct. 25, 2022
He made an effusive introduction, only to be admonished for glamorizing the lifestyle that had led to their confinement.
From New York Times ● Sep. 17, 2020
Or this: “Didion has so often been accused of glamorizing depression, but instead what she’s glamorizing is the slim possibility of depression not hollowing one out, of despair and doing.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 12, 2020
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.
