Dictionary

savagize en · VERB

Etymology

From savage + -ize.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To make savage; to reduce to a state of savagery.
   • This conceptual change allowed the Indian as tractable heathen to be rather rapidly replaced by the Indian as uncivilizable savage. When, therefore, nineteenth-century white historical writers wished to elegize or savagize the Indian, it was comparatively easy for them and their audience to assume that Mohicans, Pequots, and even Wampanoags no longer existed. 2004, John McWilliams, New England's Crises and Cultural Memory, page 108:
   • But there are many tribes of Indians and islanders more expert with their canoes — as for example the Alaskans and the Kanakas — than any European, however savagized by forest life. 1884, Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of the Northwest Coast: 1543–1800:
   • […] the chiefs came to a determination, that Jewitt should be married (they knew better than to think of savagizing Thompson) […] 1817, The Analectic Magazine, volume 9, page 153:

Forms