stylize

American  

[stahy-lahyz] / ˈstaɪ laɪz /

especially British, stylise

verb (used with object)

stylized, stylizing

1. to design in or cause to conform to a particular style, as of representation or treatment in art; conventionalize.

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stylize British  

/ ˈstaɪlaɪz /

verb

1. (tr) to give a conventional or established stylistic form to

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Other Word Forms

• nonstylization
  noun
• stylization
  noun
• stylizer
  noun
• nonstylized
  adjective
• unstylized
  adjective

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Etymology

Origin of stylize

First recorded in 1895–1900; style + -ize

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Explanation

The verb stylize means to represent something according to a particular format or structure, rather than the rules of nature. You won't recognize yourself in these photographs because the photographer used a computer program and stylized everyone to look like stick figures. Stylize is from the word style, which is itself from the Latin word stilus, which means a set manner of expression or writing. Other words from the same root word include stylization, stylus, and stiletto. You may prefer your detective movies to be realistic, rather than the stylized works of film noir.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

stylize stylized stylizing

The database then served as graphic inspiration, allowing the computer to stylize the shots of the cities where the film takes place, accelerating production that would otherwise have taken years.

From Barron's ● Mar. 10, 2026

“The Western was born at the beginning of the century with cinema. What Hollywood did was create the American epic and also stylize their reality,” says Almodóvar, speaking alongside Hawke.

From Seattle Times ● May 23, 2023

It comes down to cinema’s status as an art, meant to stylize rather than simply reproduce reality.

From New York Times ● Apr. 18, 2023

“I think we were homing in on Leyendecker because of his ability to stylize, to make characters feel monumental,” he says.

From The Verge ● Sep. 2, 2021

They stylize things and it was a movie for fun.

From Slate ● Aug. 10, 2021

Bukele accompanied his social media post with a video of soldiers filing into planes and cargo being loaded, a stylized compilation that is a hallmark of his tireless social media presence.

From Barron's ● Oct. 30, 2026

But that is the great joy of Anderson’s “Resident Evil” films: They are so remarkably stylized, so absurdly over-the-top, so referential and deferent to Anderson’s own inspirations, that they’ve become singular visions.

From Salon ● Sep. 23, 2026

There was a stylized poster of Che Guevara celebrating a little-known holiday on Oct.

From Slate ● Sep. 18, 2026

Josep Maria Subirachs’s stylized sculptures, commissioned in 1986 for the church’s western wall, are more legible.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

He talked steadily through the stop and go, freely using his hands to punctuate his speech, the movements subtle but stylized, what I recognized as Anglo.

From "Native Speaker" by Chang-rae Lee

Parker and Stone take that personal license and run with it, stylizing their own experience instead of trivializing someone else’s.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 2, 2020

It’s stylizing a thing that, at some unconscious level, you’re afraid of.

From New York Times ● Aug. 29, 2019

And by stylizing the combat, Robbins has made it especially suspenseful and tragic.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 12, 2019

Williams’s performance is just as confident: you can hear Blige’s gospel–R. & B. stylizing in her harmonies, from the iconic opening, “Boy you should know thaaat,” to its deep-digging pre-chorus, “to have you, hold you, squeeze youuu.”

From The New Yorker ● Nov. 4, 2016

In fact, human culture is very largely the selection, the rearrangement, the tracing of patterns upon, and the stylizing of, what William James called "the random irradiations and resettlements of our ideas."

From Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann

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