pragmatize

Definitions

1. 1

   To consider, represent, or embody (something unreal) as fact

   To consider, represent, or embody (something unreal) as fact; to materialize.

   • One of the miraculous passages in the life of Mohammed himself is traced plausibly by Sprenger to such a pragmatized metaphor.
   • Anglophiles hoping to pragmatize Mexican culture along the lines of that of the United States, they regarded central and southern Mexico as the sick and lethargic consequence of Spanish oppression and Catholic obscurantism.
2. 2

   To behave in a pragmatic manner

   To behave in a pragmatic manner; to focus on the material or practical rather than abstractions.

   • They are generically different ; they preach where they ought to worship, they pragmatize where they ought to pray, they discourse where they ought to send up the “Glory.”
   • If he be a rationalist he may theorize. If he be a man of the world he may pragmatize.
   • A boiling kettle, a crying baby, a ringing telephone may interrupt him, but nothing (like a life plan) less immediate than those. It is all free play here, a refusal to pragmatize.

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