Word.ws English Dictionary

adonize

adonize is the alternative form of adonise.

Meaning of adonise

Verb

adonise (third-person singular simple present adonises, present participle adonising, simple past and past participle adonised)

  1. (transitive) To embellish or adorn, especially in order to improve the appearance of.
    • Delighted with each other......we rambled....arm in arm......about the citron groves;.......and, when a mossy bank invited our repose...my charmer would weave garlands of flowers to adonise her shepherd ; ..........recline upon my arm..... and to the gentle lullaby of a murmuring stream..... sink...1804, Christoph Martin Wieland, Confessions in Elysium: Or, The Adventures of a Platonic, pages 73–74
  2. (intransitive) To enhance one's own appearance.
    • Leaving a breath to swell his tradesmen's books, To adonise, to smile, and kill with looks;1820, Peter Bayley, Sketches from St. George's Fields, page 122

Verb capitalized: Adonize

Adonize (third-person singular simple present Adonizes, present participle Adonizing, simple past and past participle Adonized)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of adonise.
    • But do pray recover your senses time enough to see me married—so run and dress yourself, make yourself gay; fly Simon and Adonize your master.1821, Love's Dream; a petite opera, in two acts., page 29
    • Oh, never mind — you have asked me now— that will do — make no apologies for the lateness of the invitation — I'll Adonize and be with you — a dinner is a sort of extempore performance.1838, P. D., Pattie's modern stage: a collection of the most approved and popular Dramas

Forms of adonize

third-person singular presentadonizes
present participleadonizing
past participleadonized
pastadonized
third-person singular presentAdonizes
present participleAdonizing
past participleAdonized
pastAdonized

Words formed from adonize

Questions about adonize

What is adonize the alternative form of?
Adonize is the alternative form of adonise.
What part of speech is adonize?
Adonize is a verb.
What is the past tense of adonize?
The past tense of adonize is adonized.

Words near adonize in the dictionary

  1. adonitol
  2. adonitoxin
  3. adonitoxol
  4. adonixanthin
  5. adonization
  6. adonize
  7. adonized
  8. adonizes
  9. adonizing
  10. adontia
  11. Adoo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: adonize (page history and authors); Adonize (page history and authors); adonise (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “adonize.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/adonize. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.