idealize
Americanverb (used with object)
-
idealizes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
idealized,
past participle, past
-
idealizing
present participle
verb (used without object)
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idealizes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
idealized,
past participle, past
-
idealizing
present participle
verb
-
to consider or represent (something) as ideal
-
(tr) to portray as ideal; glorify
-
(intr) to form an ideal or ideals
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
idealizesimple
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idealizessimple
-
have idealizedperfect
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has idealizedperfect
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am idealizingprogressive
-
are idealizingprogressive
-
is idealizingprogressive
-
have been idealizingperfect progressive
-
has been idealizingperfect progressive
Past
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idealizedsimple
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had idealizedperfect
-
was idealizingprogressive
-
were idealizingprogressive
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had been idealizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of idealize
Explanation
When you idealize something, you think of it as being much better than it really is. You might idealize your beach vacation, completely forgetting that it rained almost every day. If you idealize your favorite teacher, you imagine that he's even more wonderful than he actually is. Many people tend to idealize marriage, believing that simply being married will make them and their partners blissfully happy all the time. To idealize is to take an ordinary, flawed thing, and turn it into something ideal. In fact, ideal, or "perfect," is at the heart of idealize, with its root of the Latin idealis, or "existing in idea."
Vocabulary lists containing idealize
When Fake is Real: Young People Rebel Against Instagram, Via Instagram
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"A Village After Dark" by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Life As We Knew It
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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:
Historian Quinn Slobodian joins Felix Salmon to discuss the tech billionaires who idealize a world without democracy.
From Slate ● Feb. 4, 2025
With a book by Jessie Nelson adapted from Adrienne Shelly‘s film script, “Waitress” has a humanizing matter-of-factness about tropes that other theatrical stories about women often idealize.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 29, 2023
“It’s far too easy to idealize one party and villainize another. It’s not the case that every off-road vehicle user is a bad guy, and not every environmentalist is automatically virtuous.”
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 17, 2022
Letting go of a lost cause has two difficult and complicated steps, oversimplified as follows: Fill up your life meaningfully without this person, and resist the temptation to idealize what isn’t there.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 9, 2022
Not much to idealize when you know your aunt is crying herself to sleep next door and nothing can be done.
From "Where Things Come Back" by John Corey Whaley
Machismo, associated with traditional masculinity, emphasizes dominance and control, while marianismo idealizes women as virtuous and self-sacrificing.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 15, 2023
Called "splitting," Behr defined this as "the person devalues and idealizes you or others."
From Salon ● Jan. 26, 2023
Unlike the critic George Saintsbury, who looked to 18th-century literature for “repose and refreshment,” Damrosch never idealizes or whitewashes.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 17, 2019
Though loneliness can be devastating, the contention that our society is suffering from an epidemic of loneliness not only idealizes relationships of the past but also oversimplifies what it would actually take to combat it.
From Slate ● Feb. 22, 2018
Just as he idealizes Caroline, he paints the Loyers as the perfect mother and daughter.
From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman
We would like to leave no moment uncaptured, would like to at least try to become pearly, hairless, omniscient idealized beings, even if this desire lurks somewhere beneath what we’d consciously admit.
From Slate ● Sep. 14, 2026
Worried about its future and often nostalgic for an idealized past, it's fair to say that much of America saw itself in Dolly Parton.
From Barron's ● Aug. 25, 2026
I’m a late bloomer and worried I’m still missing out on living by being stuck in these idealized fantasies of what love could be.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
The concept is illustrated by the Carnot cycle, an idealized model that defines the maximum theoretical efficiency of a heat engine by carefully regulating the movement of heat between hot and cold regions.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 11, 2026
If a motion picture location scout were searching for an idealized chess club, the Marshall might be his pick.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
This verdict is in keeping with the tenor of the last 50 years of classical scholarship, which has moved past—perhaps too far past—any idealizing visions of Pericles and Athens.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 10, 2026
“He’s trying to re-create his childhood and idealizing something that was less than ideal,” Cumberbatch said.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 26, 2024
As Eloise gets pulled more into Sandie’s life, things get progressively darker, and the film becomes a cautionary tale about the dangers of idealizing a time and place, and about female rage.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 26, 2021
Narcissists will cycle through idealizing their victims and denigrating them in order to condition people to internalize their will and become extensions of themselves.
From Salon ● Mar. 6, 2021
Not a lot, but enough to keep a dreamer from idealizing the object of his long fascination.
From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
