mentalizing
mentalizing is the present participle and gerund of mentalize.
Meaning of mentalize
Verb
mentalize (third-person singular simple present mentalizes, present participle mentalizing, simple past and past participle mentalized)
- To make mental in nature, rather than physical
- It is interesting to observe, furthermore, that among the higher barbarians and civilized races, lust has become to a certain extent mentalized through hereditary memory and association.1899, Henry Theophilus Finck, Primitive Love and Love-Stories
- To understand the behavior of others as a product of their mental state
- Specific impairments of mentalizing in both developmental and acquired disorders suggest that this ability depends on a dedicated and circumscribed brain system.1999 November 26, Chris D. Frith, Uta Frith, “Interacting Minds--A Biological Basis”, in Science, volume 286, number 5445, →DOI, pages 1692–1695
Noun
mentalizing (uncountable)
- The understanding or assumption of a person's mental state by the observation of their behaviour
Words formed from mentalizing
Questions about mentalizing
- What does mentalizing mean?
- Mentalizing means the understanding or assumption of a person's mental state by the observation of their behaviour.
- What is mentalizing the present participle and gerund of?
- Mentalizing is the present participle and gerund of mentalize.
- What part of speech is mentalizing?
- Mentalizing is a noun.
Words near mentalizing in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mentalizing (page history and authors); mentalize (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: “mentalizing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mentalizing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.