intellectualize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to seek or consider the rational content or form of.
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to make intellectual.
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to analyze (something) intellectually or rationally.
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to ignore the emotional or psychological significance of (an action, feeling, dream, etc.) by an excessively intellectual or abstract explanation.
verb (used without object)
verb
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to make or become intellectual
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(tr) to treat or consider in an intellectual way; rationalize
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of intellectualize
First recorded in 1810–20; intellectual + -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:
“If you’re able to intellectualize that information and verbalize, this isn’t for you,” she says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 22, 2025
You can sit back afterward and intellectualize everything, but when you’re watching it, even when it’s weird, it makes logical sense.
From Salon ● Feb. 24, 2025
Levi doesn’t intellectualize it like that, doesn’t have a straightforward intention.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 12, 2023
“I could intellectualize it to no end,” Kasdan said.
From New York Times ● Dec. 24, 2021
How people who can’t face their own negative emotions intellectualize things?
From "Please Ignore Vera Dietz" by A.S. King
“Though it’s abstract, it doesn’t strike me as intellectualized or at all forced,” he says.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 23, 2021
But what “Days” gives us is something that can’t really be intellectualized or even explained: a vision of grace that collapses the boundaries between the real and the fictional, the corporeal and the spiritual.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2021
I don’t know the appeal—I’ve not intellectualized it.
From Salon ● May 24, 2019
“We have so intellectualized our faith—there’s a need to bring head, heart, and body into the forefront of our lives, for the future of the Christian tradition.”
From The New Yorker ● Feb. 8, 2019
In adapting the new revelation to the conditions of life on the physical plane, it is intellectualized and theologized.
From The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies in Psychology by J. D. (Jirah Dewey) Buck
Putting all intellectualizing aside for a moment, the main reason “Peacemaker” succeeds is because it remembers to have a good time while delivering a satisfying wallop to people that we can universally agree are terrible.
From Salon ● Feb. 17, 2022
“There wasn’t a lot of intellectualizing going on when we started,” Johansen said in “Please Kill Me,” Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s seminal 1996 oral history of punk.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 15, 2021
The actual backstage behavior of the alternative era was another story, obviously, and a lot of bad behavior was justified by intellectualizing shock tactics as “transgressive.”
From Slate ● Mar. 22, 2019
There is a logical point behind what I am saying, not just cynical intellectualizing garbage.
From New York Times ● Dec. 26, 2017
In St. Thomas Aquinas this intellectualizing process marked its highest point and beyond there was no margin of safety.
From Historia Calamitatum by Peter Abelard
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