Dictionary

Greekize en · VERB

Etymology

From Greek + -ize.

Meanings

1. To make Greek or Greek-like;
   • The Helladists, in whose ranks was the whole army, wished to consolidate and "Greekize" the regions which they had already won, without attempting to conquer more before the country was ready to digest it. 1939, Sir Thomas Andrew Alexander Montgomery-Cuninghame, Dusty measure, a record of troubled times, page 177:
   • Prideaux says that Menelaus was compelled to go a second time to Antioch before obtaining the high-priesthood, on account of the opposition at Jerusalem ; and that this last time he consented to use his office to Greekize the Jews. 1868, Samuel Hobart Winkley, A Study of the Scriptures: Parts I & II, page 28:
   • The earliest writers of France had modelled their taste by the Greek: Jodelle, Ronsard, Du Bartas, and others, imbued with Attic literature, Greekized the French idiom by their compounds, their novel terms, and their sonorous periphrases. 1865, Isaac Disraeli, Amenities of Literature:
   • In the Greek ghettos he tended to "Greekize" English words. 1973, Edward Fischer, Why Americans retire abroad, page 159:
2. To behave and speak like a Greek.
   • 'Greekize' as much as you like, Fea concluded; become a new Pausanias, Plutarch or Strabo. 2000, Ronald T. Ridley, The Pope's archaeologist: the life and times of Carlo Fea, page 215:
   • We start perhaps with their point, which can now seem so much like a form of contemporary feminism or post-colonialism, that behind any 'eutrality' or 'universality' of opinion there is always a highly culturally and historically determined context: 'But does nto the Husserlian transcendental subject hide European man whose privilege it is constantly to 'Europeanize', as the Greeks 'Greekized', that is to say, to go beyond the linmits of other cultures that are preserved as psychosocial types?' 2015, Rex Butler, Deleuze and Guattari's 'What is Philosophy?': A Reader's Guide:
   • In the Zenon archive of papyri from third century Egypt, a camel-driver complains of not receiving regular payment, presumably because, as he states, “I am a barbarian,” and, “I do not know how to 'Greekize'/behave-and-speak-like-a-Greek (hellēnizein). 2019, Sarah Davies, Rome, Global Dreams, and the International Origins of an Empire:

Forms

Synonyms

Greekify (To make Greek) · Hellenize (To make Greek) · Hellenize (To behave like a Greek)