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hypostatize

American  
[hahy-pos-tuh-tahyz, hi-] / haɪˈpɒs təˌtaɪz, hɪ- /
especially British, hypostatise

verb (used with object)

hypostatized, hypostatizing
  1. to treat or regard (a concept, idea, etc.) as a distinct substance or reality.


hypostatize British  
/ haɪˈpɒstəˌtaɪz /

verb

  1. to regard or treat as real

  2. to embody or personify

"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 hypostatize

First recorded in 1820–30; from Greek hypostatós, hypóstatos “set under, (in Stoic philosophy) substantially existing” ( see hypostatic) + -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:

When we hypostatize our hopes and wishes and treat them as matters of fact, even though they cannot be proved to be either true or false, they assume a form which Sorel describes as myth.

From Introduction to the Science of Sociology by Park, Robert Ezra

As Green tended to hypostatize the organic conception, so Dewey would make it a concrete reality, with the further specification that it must be something given to psychological observation.

From John Dewey's logical theory by Howard, Delton Thomas

If we apply it also to qualities of things, we hypostatize the abstract quality.

From A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy by Husik, Isaac

Yet if Mars is a hypostatized version of earthly nature, separate from humans, it is also something we’ve projected ourselves onto—and are already laying waste to.

From Slate Mar. 30, 2021

Spinoza and Leibniz had, following Aristotle, hypostatized in God the unity of knowledge.

From Creative Evolution by Mitchell, Arthur

They hypostatized unconsciously any force of nature that overawed them or filled them with gratefulness and joy by its beneficent or aesthetic character, and adored it.

From A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1 by Dasgupta, Surendranath

This conception of wisdom became still further hypostatized.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 13, Slice 2 "Hearing" to "Helmond" by Various

Indeed a pyrrhonist might raise the objection that if "esse" is "percipi" spirit itself can have no existence except as a perception, hypostatized into a "self," or as a perception of some other spirit.

From Evolution and Ethics by Huxley, Thomas Henry

This he accounts for by by hypostatizing a "raw material" in consciousness which is, must be, present.

From Know the Truth; A critique of the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation by Jones, Jesse H.

Such an existence would be purely fictitious, and the hypostatizing of the content of the idea into an ideal, as an individual being, is a step perfectly unauthorized.

From The Critique of Pure Reason by Meiklejohn, John Miller Dow

We cannot, at the same time, avoid regarding, by a transcendental subreptio, this formal principle as constitutive, and hypostatizing this unity.

From The Critique of Pure Reason by Meiklejohn, John Miller Dow

We begin by hypostatizing the principle of systematic unity, and by giving an anthropomorphic determination to the conception of a Supreme Intelligence, and then proceed forcibly to impose aims upon nature.

From The Critique of Pure Reason by Meiklejohn, John Miller Dow

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