Dictionary

rhapsodize en · VERB

Etymology

Etymology tree English rhapsody Proto-Indo-European *-id- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti Proto-Hellenic *-íd͏̌d͏̌ō Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō)bor. Late Latin -izōder. Middle French -iserbor. Middle English -isen English -ize English rhapsodize From rhapsody + -ize.

Meanings

1. (British, English, Oxford, US, intransitive) To speak with exaggerated or rapturous enthusiasm (about, (up)on or over something).
   • How can one rhapsodise over a view when surrounded by beer-stained tables? How lose one’s self in historical reverie amid the odour of roast veal and spinach? 1900, Jerome K. Jerome, “Chapter 12”, in Three Men on the Bummel:
   • Ron was rhapsodizing about his new broom to anybody who would listen. 2003 June 21, J. K. Rowling [pseudonym; Joanne Rowling], chapter 9, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter; 5), London: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN:
   • The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen! […] You will think me rhapsodizing; but when I am out of doors, especially when I am sitting out of doors, I am very apt to get into this sort of wondering strain. 1814 May 9, [Jane Austen], chapter IV, in Mansfield Park: […], volume II, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 76:
   • The Mysteries of Udolpho have been so much laughed at as the type of Gothic absurdity that it is difficult to come at the book with a fresh eye. We come, expecting to ridicule. Then, when we find beauty, as we do, we go to the other extreme and rhapsodize. 1929, Virginia Woolf, edited by Leonard Woolf, Granite and Rainbow: Essays by Virginia Woolf, New York: Harcourt, Brace, published 1958, Phases of Fiction, pages 107–108:
   • King Charles has rhapsodized about the charms of Romania for decades. “There is a sense of age-old continuity here,” he explained in a story last year in The Spectator. 2023 May 1, David Segal, “In Transylvania, Anyone With $200 Can Live Like a King. (Well, One Specific King.)”, in The New York Times:
2. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To say (something) with exaggerated or rapturous enthusiasm.
   • “It’s a long time since I tasted such a borshtch! Simply a vivifier! It melts in every limb!”" he kept rhapsodizing, between mouthfuls. “It ought to be sent to the Chicago Exposition. The missess would get a medal.” 1896, Abraham Cahan, chapter 5, in Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, New York: Appleton:
   • “Listen, my pearl,” he rhapsodized. “I have money now and you shall have dresses like rainbows, a gold tiara and slave girls to wait on you […]” 1923, Crosbie Garstin, chapter 22, in The Owl’s House, New York: A.L. Burt:
3. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To recount or describe (something) as a rhapsody, or in the manner of a rhapsody.
   • The campaigns themselves will take up as many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work […] 1762, [Laurence Sterne], chapter XXI, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, volume VI, London: […] T. Becket and P. A. Dehondt, […], →OCLC, page 90:
   • The great poetry of the opening chapter of Ulysses […] amplifies and rhapsodizes the world with an unlooked-for accuracy and transport. 1982, Seamus Heaney, “Joyce’s Poetry”, in Finders Keepers: Selected Prose, 1971-2001, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, published 2002, page 423:
4. (British, English, Oxford, US, intransitive) To perform a rhapsody.
   • […] Carolan, the last of the Irish bards, rhapsodized in the halls of the O’Connors so lately as the year 1730. 1824, Lady Morgan, The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa, London: Henry Colburn, Volume 2, Chapter 8, p. 33, footnote:
   • Should one gather statistics of the enormous production of poetry some sixty or seventy years ago, they would scarcely appear credible. Journals and magazines teemed with it. Editors openly countenanced it. Even the daily press affected it. Love sighed in home-made stanzas. Patriotism rhapsodized on the hustings, or cited rolling hexameters to an enraptured legislature. 1911, Stephen Leacock, “The Passing of the Poet”, in Literary Lapses, London: John Lane, page 187:

Forms

Deriveds

rhapsodizer · rhapsodization

Synonyms

rave