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historicize

American  
[hi-stawr-uh-sahyz, -stor-] / hɪˈstɔr əˌsaɪz, -ˈstɒr- /
especially British, historicise

verb (used without object)

historicized, historicizing
  1. to interpret something as a product of historical development.


verb (used with object)

historicized, historicizing
  1. to narrate as history; render historic.

Etymology

Origin of historicize

First recorded in 1840–50; historic + -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:

I’ve long tried to historicize ideas that people hold.

From Slate ● Apr. 13, 2026

When I teach Butler’s novels to my students, we use them to interpret our present moment as well as to historicize it in relationship to the long history of racism and sexism.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 25, 2022

To illustrate and historicize her points, Rankine also includes actual remarks from public figures, from Martha Washington and Thomas Jefferson to Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump.

From New York Times ● Mar. 24, 2022

It is a question he does not answer as much as historicize:

From The New Yorker ● Nov. 26, 2019

The last, to historicize, I sealed in an envelope and mailed to myself.

From "Native Speaker" by Chang-rae Lee

Millennials need to get used to the fact that our cultural touchstones are going to be historicized, if not already.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 6, 2022

The black power movement is frequently historicized as being rife with militant anger and radicalism.

From The Guardian ● Nov. 9, 2019

The historicized past is everywhere I walk in my daily rituals—to get to the store, or to the gym on Rampart Street, or to my car to visit with Carl.

From The New Yorker ● Aug. 12, 2019

The arguments on both sides of this question—mythologized history or historicized mythology—fill volumes, and if anything the debate seems to be heating up rather than resolving.

From Salon ● Jul. 6, 2015

This means that the content of the pure intuition cannot be either an abstract concept, or a speculative concept or idea, or a conceptualized, that is historicized, representation.

From Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic by Benedetto Croce

“Within that archiving and historicizing work was born my passion to bring together the trans and nonbinary community and queer artists,” Galindo said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 25, 2023

I’m intrigued by the practice of historicizing our lives in real time, of giving our eras keywords and themes, containers in which to grow.

From New York Times ● Jun. 3, 2023

In the years since, cookbooks devoted to Asian food have continued to adopt a tone of expertise, parsing regional differences or historicizing spice tolerance, approaching their subjects with a kind of scholarly reverence.

From The New Yorker ● Nov. 23, 2015

Dramatically, “Written on Skin” derives some of its tension and power from its historicizing frame.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 12, 2015

But it was otherwise when the same events came to be contemplated by the historicizing Greeks, who could not be satisfied without either finding or inventing satisfactory bonds of coherence between the separate events.

From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 01 by John Rudd

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