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Showing results for spiritualize. Search instead for spiritualizing.
Synonyms

spiritualize

American  
[spir-i-choo-uh-lahyz] / ˈspɪr ɪ tʃu əˌlaɪz /
especially British, spiritualise

verb (used with object)

spiritualized, spiritualizing
  1. to make spiritual.

  2. to invest with a spiritual meaning.


spiritualize British  
/ ˈspɪrɪtjʊəˌlaɪz /

verb

  1. (tr) to make spiritual or infuse with spiritual content

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Etymology

Origin of spiritualize

First recorded in 1625–35; spiritual + -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:

Though I admit, I myself am tempted to spiritualize decomposition.

From New York Times Mar. 31, 2018

It also did so on a grander scale, binding an immense continent with tracks and producing trains of such magnificence that they moved Nathaniel Hawthorne to exclaim: "They spiritualize travel!"

From Time Magazine Archive

In a country without antique monuments, the image of Arcadia serves to spiritualize the past.

From Time Magazine Archive

The monk Athenaय perceives in a vision that his mission is to spiritualize Thaïs, to make her the bride of Christ.

From Time Magazine Archive

Philo's answer is in fact to spiritualize everything that is material, and universalize everything that is particular.

From Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria by Bentwich, Norman

This production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” seems like a gift from the other side, that mysterious, creative realm where history is spiritualized.

From Los Angeles Times Nov. 1, 2025

In their churches, food banks, recovery services and community meetings, local NAR leaders offer individual and highly spiritualized explanations for this country’s systemic crises of poverty, homelessness, hunger and addiction.

From Salon Jul. 21, 2025

Wright came up with the name by combining the words “utopia” and “USA,” thereby expressing precisely the kind of spiritualized manifest destiny Henry R. Luce would have applauded.

From Salon Mar. 16, 2014

And it is not noble or sublime or spiritualized, as one likes to believe.

From Time Magazine Archive

Her face lacked the almost spiritualized expression of his, but undoubtedly there was a likeness.

From A Life For a Love A Novel by Meade, L. T.

Catholicism has given Waugh the unifying influence and the spiritualizing force whose workings are evident in Brideshead.

From Time Magazine Archive

That is what is meant when we speak of spiritualizing the feelings.

From The Moral Instruction of Children by Adler, Felix

There was no sentimentalism in it; it was the spirit of Jesus spiritualizing and transforming and extending the natural instinct of brotherliness by making it theocentric.

From The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire by Glover, T. R. (Terrot Reaveley)

Amid such splendor I began to realize that love has the power of spiritualizing all things, of interfusing them with its own rapture.

From The Goddess of Atvatabar Being the history of the discovery of the interior world and conquest of Atvatabar by Bradshaw, William Richard

But Homer maintained his place in literature, and the demand for a spiritualizing of his works increased rather than diminished.

From Introduction to the History of Religions Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV by Jastrow, Morris

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