Moralize

Quick meaning: Moralize is a verb meaning (intransitive) To make moral reflections (on, upon, about or over something); to regard acts and events as involving a moral.

Meaning

(intransitive) To make moral reflections (on, upon, about or over something); to regard acts and events as involving a moral.

More Meanings

1. (transitive) To say (something) expressing a moral reflection or judgment.
2. (transitive) To render moral; to correct the morals of; to give the appearance of morality to.
3. (transitive) To give a moral quality to; to affect the moral quality of, either for better or worse.
4. (transitive, obsolete) To apply to a moral purpose; to explain in a moral sense; to draw a moral from.
5. (transitive, obsolete) To supply with moral lessons, teachings, or examples; to lend a moral to.

Example Sentences

The usual conduct of the spoilt child! Had she not witnessed it, and moralized upon it, in other families?

“Unless I heard the whole repeated, I cannot continue it,” she said. / “Yet it was quickly learned, ‘soon gained, soon gone,’” moralized the tutor.

A Cake Related Fatphobic Incident — or CRFI for short — is that moment when it's time to eat delicious cake, and an otherwise joyous experience gets ruined by a moralizing impulse.

1929, Virginia Woolf, “Geraldine and Jane” in The Common Reader, Second Series, London: The Hogarth Press, 1935, p. 191, “The more one loves, the more helpless one feels”, she moralised.

Word Forms

• moralizes
• moralizing
• moralized
• moralise

Synonyms for moralize

Depending on context, synonyms include judge, sermonize, preachify, moralise.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include moralise, preachify, sermonize, moral, remoralize, remoralise.

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