objectify
Americanverb (used with object)
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to present as an object, especially of sight, touch, or other physical sense; make objective; externalize.
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to treat (a person) as an object or thing.
Women are objectified and their physical attributes highlighted in ways that do not apply to men.
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of objectify
Explanation
To objectify someone is to treat them as an object rather than as a human being. If your teacher thinks children should be seen and not heard, you might say he objectifies kids. There are many different ways to objectify a person, including forcing them to be silent, focusing on just their physical body and not their mind, or implying that their appearance or outward beauty is the only important thing about them. You can also use this verb's original meaning, "to take something abstract and make it concrete." Artists objectify abstract feelings and emotions by turning them into physical works of art, for example.
Vocabulary lists containing objectify
Here to Stay
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"Myth as Structure in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon" by A. Leslie Harris
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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:
The book challenges our default tendency to objectify the natural world—even as we grant legal personhood to corporations and intellectual property.
From Salon ● May 28, 2025
"It is unacceptable for any visitor, foreign or local, to exploit or objectify indigenous communities or their children for any purpose, including photography," the ministry said in a statement cited by Informanté newspaper.
From BBC ● May 21, 2025
According to the team's authors, attempts to standardise and objectify the development and evaluation of chemical reactions are still quite new and relatively uncommon.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 10, 2024
Including the topic in medical education could “counteract an ever-present risk of medical injustices” and “the tendency to objectify patients and research participants,” the commission’s co-chairs told Science.
From Science Magazine ● Nov. 15, 2023
By telling stories, you objectify your own experience.
From "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien
“Gaza’s inhabitants are objectified, reduced to numbers or blurry concepts. The media rarely shows unfiltered images or personal stories, because doing so would be too confronting for most viewers,” he said.
From Slate ● May 30, 2025
The Kraken, who’d received some outside complaints on social media about players being objectified, stopped posting BookTok content from there but left videos up on their social-media platforms.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 2, 2023
Perennially objectified actor Megan Fox details a few of her ‘tons’ of flaws in a new interview, including that she suffers from body dysmorphia.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2023
Talking about being objectified is “really tricky,” he said, acknowledging that the experience is well known to many women in his industry, and can have higher stakes for them.
From New York Times ● Oct. 25, 2022
I hoped she didn’t think I objectified women.
From "Here to Stay" by Sara Farizan
It added that even if some viewers inferred innuendo, it did not contain explicit content or objectifying imagery.
From BBC ● Feb. 18, 2026
What’s key to remember is that this new wave of hype surrounding East Asian media is less keen on whitewashing or objectifying than it may have been during previous eras.
From Salon ● Sep. 17, 2025
Song, on the other hand, finds that the term “identity” carries an objectifying connotation, as it fails to fully describe a person’s layered selfhood.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 2, 2023
“She’s not objectifying these men,” says the critic and curator Bob Nickas, a friend since the mid-80s.
From New York Times ● Mar. 29, 2023
And this process of emotional and objectifying perception has clearly no other end than just perception itself.
From The Principles of Aesthetics by Dewitt H. Parker
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.
