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’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
Martiel doesn’t intellectualize slavery’s wake; instead, he makes it terribly present, in the body of a living person: his own.
From New York Times ● May 23, 2024
Levi doesn’t intellectualize it like that, doesn’t have a straightforward intention.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 12, 2023
Similar to many of the other methods, the Orff Schulwerk emphasizes that children should experience first and then analyze or intellectualize about music afterwards, and encourages hands-on music-making regardless of skill level.
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
I’d say because I had intellectualized and lived with Macbeth in a real way, it allowed me to humanize him a bit more as Macduff.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 12, 2022
“Though it’s abstract, it doesn’t strike me as intellectualized or at all forced,” he says.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 23, 2021
“I made some kind of intellectualized comment, and then he said, ‘Can you say it in your own words?’
From New York Times ● Jan. 7, 2021
I don’t know the appeal—I’ve not intellectualized it.
From Salon ● May 24, 2019
No philosopher, though he becomes so intellectualized that he cannot understand how one thing or event causes another, ever escapes from the feeling that HE causes effects.
From The Foundations of Personality by Myerson, Abraham
“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
“I don’t think there was much intellectualizing about why we did it; it was just instinctual,” Zvibleman said.
From Slate ● Mar. 1, 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 Abelard, Peter
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.
