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
“I think I was trying to intellectualize my feelings to get away from being vulnerable,” she says.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 18, 2025
I’m a psychologist and so the way I manage any negative feelings is to intellectualize: I think about the causes and context of a situation.
From Salon ● Dec. 9, 2024
“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
Nabers: Episode 6 is a step-out episode that allows us to intellectualize some of the stuff that we’ve seen in a way that we probably haven’t intellectualized before.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 17, 2023
“Though it’s abstract, it doesn’t strike me as intellectualized or at all forced,” he says.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 23, 2021
I don’t know the appeal—I’ve not intellectualized it.
From Salon ● May 24, 2019
But for actors like Liam Craig, who encountered Mr. Bayes as an N.Y.U. graduate student in 1997, the training provides a vital counterbalance to intellectualized acting.
From New York Times ● Nov. 16, 2016
And looked at as an exercise of mental power courage must always be greater than the most highly intellectualized form of fear or despair.
From Humanly Speaking by Samuel McChord Crothers
“We see them as intellectualizing or sanitizing radical-right ideas that are then taken up by the parties in power,” said Allchorn, the U.K. extremism expert.
From Salon ● Jul. 21, 2026
There was no looking back or intellectualizing what I do in those moments.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 4, 2022
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
The higher we go in intellectualizing ourselves, the closer we draw to the cosmic consciousness, and the more familiar we become with its laws.
From Freedom Talks No. II by Julia Seton M.D.
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.
