rhetoricizev.
/rᵻˈtɒrᵻsʌɪz/, U.S. /rəˈtɔrəˌsaɪz/ rare before 20th cent.
1. intransitive. To use rhetorical language, esp. to speak or write in an excessively grand or verbose style.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > the arts > literature > style of language or writing > ornateness > use ornate language [verb (intransitive)] > use rhetorical language
rhetorize?1594
rhetoricate1617
rhetoricize1676
1676 R. Meggott Serm. St. Paul's Day 10 But we (as he very melancholily rhetoriciseth) are naked, impotent, and shiftless.
1868 Monthly Relig. Mag. July 78 The devotees of naturalism..mysticize and sentimentalize and rhetoricize and poetize about spirituality.
1965 New Statesman 22 Oct. 604/1 All excellently put—though a tendency to rhetoricise is already apparent in the plea for ‘the real impenetrable human person’.
2007 J. Storey Human Resource Managem. (ed. 3) i. 3 Senior managers in HR are prone to rhetoricize to a degree that is often not matched in academic circles.
2. transitive. To express in rhetorical language; to characterize in rhetorical terms; to make rhetorical in form or style.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > the arts > literature > style of language or writing > ornateness > embellish [verb (transitive)] > make rhetorical
rhetorize1702
rhetoricize1855
1855 N.Y. Tribune 7 Mar. 4/4 The very ribaldry of robbers and cut-throats, rhetoricised into formal phraseology.
1910 W. Sichel Sterne xviii. 290 Byron has well sung of the sensibility which he rhetoricised.
1977 L. J. M. LaRue in C. V. Willie Black/brown/white Relations iv. 74 Blacks rhetoricize disdain for birth control as a ‘trick of the Man’ to half [sic] the growth of the black population.
1994 Jrnl. Amer. Acad. Relig. 62 134 The ideal of historians..is to approximate a logical, discursive model of description and explanation, rather than to rhetoricize their practice.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2010; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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