ruralize

ruralize verb: to make rural; to give a rural character to (something or someone).

Verb

ruralize (third-person singular simple present ruralizes, present participle ruralizing, simple past and past participle ruralized)

(transitive) To make rural; to give a rural character to (something or someone).
- the curling cloud / Of city smoke, by distance ruralised1799, William Wordsworth, The Prelude, London: Moxon, published 1850, Book 1, Introduction, p. 7
- This tardy favorite of fortune […] thoroughly ruralized from head to foot, proceeded to escort us up the hill behind his house.1883, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 2, in The Silverado Squatters, Boston: Roberts Brothers, pages 40–41
(intransitive) To become rural; to take up residence or spend time in the country.
- I shall certainly attend your Farce, if in town; but as ’t is possible I shall ruralize this week, I will have no orders of you till next week.c. 1822, Charles Lamb, undated letter to John Howard Payne in The Letter of Charles Lamb, 1814-1825, Boston: The Bibliophile Society, Volume 4, pp. 197-198
- […] Letitia, who, except one jaunt to Margate, had never been out of the sound of Bow-bells, that she might ruralise after the fashion of the poets, sit under trees, and gather roses all day long;1824, Mary Russell Mitford, “Rosedale and Its Tenants”, in The Monthly Magazine, volume 11, page 525
Synonyms:

rusticate

[…] the quiet bachelor house had its best rooms on the big garden, which seemed to advance into them through their wide windows and ruralize their dullness.1890, Henry James, chapter 2, in The Tragic Muse, volume 2, London: Macmillan, page 23:
But it is also a collection of villages, a ruralized metropolis where people live by their wits and devices, cut off from the authorities, the law and often each other.2007 March 1, Michael Slackman, “In Arab Hub, the Poor Are Left to Their Fate”, in New York Times:

third-person singular present	ruralizes
present participle	ruralizing
past participle	ruralized
past	ruralized
alternative form	ruralise

From rural + -ize.

What does ruralize mean?: Ruralize means to make rural; to give a rural character to (something or someone).
How do you use ruralize in a sentence?: […] the quiet bachelor house had its best rooms on the big garden, which seemed to advance into them through their wide windows and ruralize their dullness.
What part of speech is ruralize?: Ruralize is a verb.
What is the past tense of ruralize?: The past tense of ruralize is ruralized.

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