1834 T. Keightley Tales v. 203 This is what I term pragmatising, or endeavouring to extract historic truth out of mythic legends.

1929 S. J. Case Exper. Supernatural in Early Christian Times i. 19 This pragmatizing of theology may have suited Pliny, but the average man was an absolutist who tended to stress without reserve the superhuman even in the case of a man-made divinity.

1989 R. B. Kershner Joyce, Bakhtin, & Pop. Lit. vi. 257 The Victorian pragmatizing of the Romantic cult of sincerity with its concomitant ritualization of confession helped to create a subgenre of literature addressing..the institution of marriage within the context of sexuality.

1866 E. A. Freeman in Fortn. Rev. May 642 The old pragmatizing or Euhemeristic school of mythological interpretation.

1878 E. G. Sihler Ann. Caesar (1911) ix. 106 When Plutarch indulges in pragmatizing reflections, one is not positively certain whether Livy colors here, or whether they are the children of his own deeper valuation.

1909 W. James Meaning of Truth viii. 191 The terms of which that universe consists positively forbid any non-realistic interpretation of the function of knowledge defined there. The pragmatizing epistemologist posits there a reality and a mind with ideas.

1979 H. S. Albinski Perspectives Revol. & Evol. 85 The historical Canadian preoccupation with national unity, which in itself represented a doctrinally neutralizing or pragmatizing influence upon Canada's party system.

1988 Financial Times (Nexis) 24 May i.4 The sobering reality of an inflation rate now raging at 20 per cent a month..is expected to prove a powerful pragmatising force.