Word.ws English Dictionary

anthropize

anthropize verb: to transform or adapt the environment either to meet the needs of humans, or by human activity.

Verb

anthropize (third-person singular simple present anthropizes, present participle anthropizing, simple past and past participle anthropized)

  1. (transitive) To transform or adapt the environment either to meet the needs of humans, or by human activity.
  2. (transitive, AI ethics) To imbue with anthropic qualities; to make human; to anthropomorphize.
    • In his speculations about the phylogenies of the apes, Reynolds rests his conclusions upon standard but insecure evidence and premature interpretations, and he occasionally anthropizes living apes; for example (p. 126) "maniacal calls of groups of chimpanzees ..."1968, American Scientist, volume 56, page 490
    • This dream of mechanizing people by way of anthropizing machines seems to have originated in the early nineteenth century2018, Mary Midgley, What Is Philosophy For?, page 119

Examples of anthropize in a sentence

  • behavioral literature that shows ways in which humans can be prompted to treat anthropized technology as if it is human2022, “Towards Human-Centric Privacy and Humanless Information Protection”, in Virginia Journal of Law & Technology, volume 26, number 1:
  • This framing however requires you to anthropize AI to an extent.2024 March 15, Katrina Paulson, “Anthropomorphization vs. Dehumanization”, in Medium:

Forms of anthropize

third-person singular presentanthropizes
present participleanthropizing
past participleanthropized
pastanthropized
alternative formanthropise

Origin of anthropize

From anthrop- + -ize.

Words formed from anthropize

Questions about anthropize

What does anthropize mean?
Anthropize means to transform or adapt the environment either to meet the needs of humans, or by human activity.
How do you use anthropize in a sentence?
behavioral literature that shows ways in which humans can be prompted to treat anthropized technology as if it is human
What part of speech is anthropize?
Anthropize is a verb.
What is the past tense of anthropize?
The past tense of anthropize is anthropized.

Words near anthropize in the dictionary

  1. anthropise
  2. anthropised
  3. anthropising
  4. anthropism
  5. anthropization
  6. anthropize
  7. anthropized
  8. anthropizes
  9. anthropizing
  10. anthropo-
  11. anthropobiological

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: anthropize (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: “anthropize.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/anthropize. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.