historicize

[ hi-stawr-uh-sahyz, -stor- ]

verb (used without object)

, his·tor·i·cized, his·tor·i·ciz·ing.

1. to interpret something as a product of historical development.

verb (used with object)

, his·tor·i·cized, his·tor·i·ciz·ing.

1. to narrate as history; render historic.

Word History and Origins

Origin of historicize¹

First recorded in 1840–50; historic + -ize

Example Sentences

When I teach Butler’s novels to my students, we use them to interpret our present moment as well as to historicize it in relationship to the long history of racism and sexism.

From Seattle Times

To illustrate and historicize her points, Rankine also includes actual remarks from public figures, from Martha Washington and Thomas Jefferson to Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump.

From New York Times

It is a question he does not answer as much as historicize:

From The New Yorker

Keret said his father fought to humanize and historicize the Holocaust, to see it as more than a story of unmitigated oppression.

From New York Times

In trying to “historicize” all that “ambient emotion in the 1950s” — in other words, to meaningfully gauge how anxious, skeptical or indifferent Americans were at a particular moment in time — Ms. McEnaney mined government archives, news clippings and other sources that indicated federal officials were trying to figure out the same thing back then, coming at it like social scientists, military strategists and Madison Avenue admen all at once; even they couldn’t be sure.

From New York Times