mongrelize

[ muhng-gruh-lahyz, mong- ]

verb (used with object)

, mon·grel·ized, mon·grel·iz·ing.

1. to subject (a breed, group, etc.) to crossbreeding, especially with one considered inferior.
2. to mix the kinds, classes, types, characters, or sources of origin of (people, animals, or things).
3. to make debased or impure:

   The French they speak is mongrelized.

mongrelize

/ ˈmʌŋɡrəˌlaɪz /

verb

1. tr to make mixed or mongrel in breed, race, character, kind, etc

Derived Forms

• ˌmongreliˈzation, noun
• ˈmongrelˌizer, noun

Other Words From

• mongrel·i·zation noun
• mongrel·izer noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of mongrelize¹

First recorded in 1620–30; mongrel + -ize

Example Sentences

Its local leader, furniture store owner Amis Guthridge, asserted that integration was a communist plot “founded in Moscow … to mongrelize the White race in America.”

From Washington Post

Unapologetic about his white supremacist views, Eastland had once called school integration “a program designed to mongrelize the Anglo-Saxon race.”

From Slate

Eastland believed that desegregation would “mongrelize” the white race and had denounced the Brown vs.

From Slate

In “Watchman,” Jean Louise watches her beloved father preside over a White Citizens’ Council meeting where a speaker spews an invective about blacks who threaten to “mongrelize” the white race.

From Washington Post

I hope the world will little note nor long remember what you are saying here. “—and anybody who thinks different’s either a Communist or might as well be one. Passive resistance, my hind foot. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another they are Communists. “—they always want to marry a shade lighter than themselves, they want to mongrelize the race—” Jean Louise interrupted.

From Literature

Related Words

• crossbreed
• hybridize
• interbreed
• mix