Latinize
/ˈlatɪnʌɪz
/(also Latinise)
verb [with object]
1Give a Latin or Latinate form to (a word): his name was Latinized into Confucius...
- I'm not quite sure why he felt the need to Latinise the names of his fallacies but I suspect it put more people off reading the article than it encouraged.
- Colchester, whose name was now Latinized to Camulodunum, became the site of a substantial fortress for the Twentieth Legion.
- The shortened, Latinised version of his name became Sancte Claus, which led to the obvious name of Santa Claus.
1.1 archaic Translate into Latin: he had a hand in Latinizing that book
1.2 [no object] archaic Use Latin forms or idiom: she Latinizes less in the poems that follow
2Make (a people) conform to the ideas and customs of the ancient Romans, the Latin peoples, or the Latin Church.It was the winter of rebellion as the Marthomite Christians decided to resist what they called attempts to ‘Latinise’ the church in Kerala....
- Latin Americans don't want to Latinize the United States - they want to Americanize their own countries.
- Jupiter promises to add the Teucrian rituals and mores, but to Latinize them.
Derivatives
Latinization
/ noun ...- Not only are Hispanics transforming the United States in a process of Latinization, but also Latinos are being transformed by the United States in a process of Americanization.
- We are going through a process of Latinization.
- The fact that South Americans now do the work is part of a larger phenomenon, the Latinization of the American West.
Latinizer
- Though Johnson is said to be the great Latinizer of English, English never did get Latinized.
- And the Apostles Methodius and Cyril, Greeks by origin, but in communication with Rome, are claimed, wrongly, by the Latinisers as their own.
- As for the Latinisers, a curse on them and their fruits - the ‘b’ in doubt and debt, the ‘s’ in island.
Origin
Late 16th century: from late Latin Latinizare, from Latin Latinus (see Latin).