Dictionary

muscularize en · VERB

Etymology

From muscular + -ize.

Meanings

1. To increase the size of the muscles.
   • 1982, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure I need to lift weights & muscularize my chest—it's still so sunken in.
   • Advanced freehand exercises shape and muscularize the body in a unique way; all the world's best-built men include them in their workouts. 1993, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder,, page 159:
2. (transitive) To make (something) more masculine, virile, or militaristic.
   • Perhaps the most famous example of this impulse to muscularize Christianity in the early twentieth century was evangelist Billy Sunday. 2002, L. Dean Allen, Rise Up, O Men of God: the Men and Religion Forward Movement and Promise Keepers, page 73:

Forms

Deriveds

neomuscularized · muscularization · remuscularize · nonmuscularized