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
Although they had already sought to mythologize in the past the supposedly noble sacrifice of Nazi activists killed in street fighting, Wessel was the first to be elevated to supreme martyr status.
From Salon ● Sep. 28, 2025
And, like the house it hopes to capture and mythologize in equal measure, the pop-up book is a celebration of Willis’ own “more is more” sensibility.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 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
Perhaps; but, as in the days of Plato, we must needs mythologize when we come to deal with the other life.
From Tragic Sense Of Life by J. E. Crawford (John Ernest Crawford) Flitch
“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
The mystery, along with Lightfoot’s mournful and eminently meme-able dirge, created fertile soil for a cultural resurgence today—one driven largely by Gen Z and millennials who love mythologizing working-class tragedies and Midwestern nostalgia.
From Slate ● Nov. 10, 2025
Aeschylus’ “Oresteia” concludes with “Eumenides,” depicting the establishment of the Areopagus court to replace cycles of vengeance, thus mythologizing the roots of jury trials.
From Salon ● Apr. 13, 2025
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
And the process of mythologizing Bobby commenced in earnest.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
