literatize

literatize verb: to make literate; to introduce or increase the incidence of reading and writing.

Verb (1)

literatize (third-person singular simple present literatizes, present participle literatizing, simple past and past participle literatized)

To make literate; to introduce or increase the incidence of reading and writing.
- On the whole, the militia leaders were members of wealthy local families, many of them somewhat literatized, who seem to have been trying to hold on to their local power, ...1990, Late Imperial China - Volume 11, Issues 1-2, page 120
- Books function as our extemal memory devices, and with them the need to exercise our intemal memories dwindles; something which has been noticed in recently literatized Inuit culture.2000, Forests, Trees, and People Newsletter - Issues 43-46, page 11

Verb (2)

literatize (third-person singular simple present literatizes, present participle literatizing, simple past and past participle literatized)

To create a body of literature about; to make into a subject that is studied through reading about it.
- As for so many other of our vices we are indebted to them too for the disposition to "literatize" and " articize " life.1922, Prosser Hall Frye, Romance & Tragedy, page 74
- The attempt to "literatize" other disciplines is often made by those thinkers in them who have been most receptive and yet most threatened by the invasion of what is often called "continental" theory and by Marxism.1988, Paul Smith, Discerning the Subject, page 169
To make literary; to write using a literary style
- Self-conscious, saddled with primerous blurbs and introductory matter, it is so sophisticated, so scrupulous in crediting even the supplier who manufactures the Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Award tokens (sic), that it resembles some kind of grotesque attempt to literatize a corporate...1967, Galaxy Magazine - Volume 26, page 159
- Perhaps in our technotronic age the importance of literature as such has receded, but as it has withdrawn film and video and television have been highly literatized.1991, Ewa M. Thompson, The Search for Self-Definition in Russian Literature, page 76
To engage in literary pursuits; to read and write literature.
- He says of himself in a letter to a friend: "I literatize away the morning, ride at three, go to bathe at five, dine at six, and get through the evening as I best may, sometimes by correcting a proof.”1867 November, “Busy Brains”, in The Atlantic Monthly, volume 20, number 121, page 581
- I neither rode recklessly, flirted desperately, carried clothes imperially, turned men's heads, broke their hearts, sang divinely, athletized, literatized, antagonized, nor hypnotized.1895, Frances Aymar Mathews, “A Confession of Success”, in Godey's Magazine, volume 131, page 384

Forms of literatize

third-person singular present	literatizes
present participle	literatizing
past participle	literatized
past	literatized
alternative form	literatise

Origin of literatize

From literate + -ize.

From literature + -ize.

Questions about literatize

What does literatize mean?: Literatize means to make literate; to introduce or increase the incidence of reading and writing.
What part of speech is literatize?: Literatize is a verb.
What is the past tense of literatize?: The past tense of literatize is literatized.

Words near literatize in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: literatize (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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