verb
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to tell, study, or explain (myths)
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(intr) to create or make up myths
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(tr) to convert into a myth
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of mythologize
1595–1605; mytholog(y) + -ize; compare French mythologiser
Explanation
To mythologize is to turn an event into a myth, especially by exaggerating it. Some parents mythologize the story of their child's birth, telling it again and again until it becomes a well-known story. When you talk about the past, or some incident or experience from your life, you can mythologize it by making it slightly more exciting and interesting, and by re-telling the tale over and over. An actual myth becomes well-known through repetition by many people over many years (generations, even). To turn an ordinary event into something of a myth is to mythologize it. The word comes from the Greek mythos, "story, speech, or anything delivered by word of mouth."
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:
We can’t re-create America’s fleeting golden age, and we can’t continue to mythologize it into permanence.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2025
Adriana Romanko, a psychotherapist who leads a volunteer group that supplies the military, UAID, said it was natural for an embattled society to mythologize its defenders in a fight for survival.
From Reuters ● Oct. 4, 2023
The Civil War, followed by the country’s centennial in 1876, helped mythologize the flag.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 3, 2023
If Morris and Aloni’s film is unfocused and weak in its patterning and construction, it is equally an important record of a living history that refuses to mythologize itself.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 4, 2022
He began to mythologize about it on account of the grand elements of welfare, risk, and skill which were in it.
From Folkways A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals by Sumner, William Graham
“A mythologized Disraeli,” Ms. Jones writes, “provided political, literary and intellectual means by which Toryism could be positioned against an increasingly demonized ‘Victorian Liberalism.’”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 12, 2026
It has been admired, criticized, mythologized and blamed in equal measure.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
After all, what could enrage reactionaries more than a confident, gender-bending, anti-colonial Puerto Rican performing in Spanish on the country’s most mythologized stage?
From Salon ● Feb. 12, 2026
But Penn’s legacy has been mythologized, to some extent, and his mission still led to the dispossession of natives, historians say.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 11, 2024
But among white Texans they were widely mythologized.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
Answers unfold in three chronological sections containing nearly 280 objects that position samurai as “global icons,” the product of mythologizing at home as much as abroad.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 7, 2026
She’s the one who witnesses most intimately how Bob evolves from a kid mythologizing his own life into a superstar mythologized by fans and the press.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 17, 2024
But some historians have complained that the great-man story obscures our sense of American urban history, mythologizing Moses, sidelining his peers, and overstating his impact.
From Slate ● Sep. 16, 2024
"This can lead to embarrassing mistakes, and for journalists to feed into the hype machine, by, for example, anthropomorphizing AI technologies, and mythologizing tech companies."
From BBC ● Mar. 13, 2024
And the process of mythologizing Bobby commenced in earnest.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
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.
