continentalize

Verb

continentalize (third-person singular simple present continentalizes, present participle continentalizing, simple past and past participle continentalized)

1. To broaden or narrow in scope or focus so that the domain becomes the continent.
   • He who would continentalize our education would continentalize our history. I do not think that we shall be continentalized; I think that the movement has failed.1900, American Education - Volume 3, page 205
   • Used in connection with Christianity, as in the title of a well-known book, Pan-Americanism in Its Religious Aspect, it provincializes, or at best, continentalizes what is by nature universal.1925, Committee on Cooperation in Latin America, Christian Work in South America
2. To spread throughout the continent.
   • Such seawater-displacing ice sheets would contibute to a global O enrichment in the oceans and would further continentalize the climates of northern Europe, Asia, and North America but would not contribute significantly to reducing eustatic sea level.1985, TER-QUA Symposium Series - Volume 1, page 98
   • On the other hand, during summer the air circulation is intensified by the activity of the Azoric anticyclone which brings to our country important quantities of humid air which, however, continentalizes gradually towards east.1992, Analele Științifice
3. To make or become more culturally European.
   • A continentalized Scotchman is a character with whom every one who has resided on the Continent is familiar; a continentalized Englishman, if not an unknown, is a very unusual phenomenon.1860, The North British Review - Volume 33, page 73
   • The one main reason why many are so much opposed to the Sunday opening of Museums is that it may be the getting in of the thin end of the wedge to continentalize our Sunday.1890, Thomas Greenwood, Public Libraries
4. To visit Europe.
   • So far, therefore, as economy goes, this continentalizing has not succeeded up to this. Instead of living rent free at Dodsborough, with our own mutton and turnips, the ducks and peas, that cost us, I may say, nothing, here we are, keeping up the price of foreign markets, and feeding the foreigners...1882, Charles James Lever, The Dodd family abroad. The confessions of Con Cregan, page 32
   • This was in February — ;— now in March it came to his ears— that I wanted to get rid of my Parrots, — for which I asked £70 — so he came to me — & after sundry negociations — offered me £50 — in money — on condition that I would continentalize with him — & to pay my expenses there & back entirely...2008, William Wordsworth, Stephen Hebron, William Wordsworth: Selected Poems
5. To make into a continent.
   • The river forms an island here which the ice now continentalizes.1865, Sir William Howard Russell, Canada : Its Defences, Condition, and Resources, page 63
   • Why the lowly Urals should continentalize Europe from Asia, while the massive Himalayas should at best sub-continentalize India, is a question best answered by the cultural pretensions of Czar Peter the Great and the imperial distortions of the Victorians. Geographical science has little to do with...2007, F. Datini, Simonetta Cavaciocchi, Europe's economic relations with the Islamic world, 13th-18th