strangify
strangify verb: to make strange or exotic.
Verb
strangify (third-person singular simple present strangifies, present participle strangifying, simple past and past participle strangified)
- To make strange or exotic.
- In 1970, Nabokov specifically took issue with an attempt critically to explicate his work within this Russian formalist matrix, arguing: "What doesn't make strange, estrange, strangify in a book , if the author is a genuine artist? No, leave those terms alone. Avoid textbook truth"2002, Paul Giles, Virtual Americas, page 313
- How can a translator adopt a single style for such diverse material? One thing I have definitely avoided in my translation is the attempt to “strangify” the English, to forgo the straightforward in favor of something—anything—that sounds unusual.2012, James L. Kugel, The Great Poems of the Bible, page 16
- To extend so as to be accessible to others; to universalize.
- If I want to make myself understandable to you, I need to strangify my discourse into your language. If I want to make my ideals universally 'practiceable', I cannot force you to practice it in my social context; I need to strangify my ideals into your social context.2007, Zhao Dunhua, Dialogues of Philosophies, Religions and Civilizations in the Era of Globalization, page 201
- Through appropriating a language understandable to others, we shall be able to strangify ourselves via that kind of language .2008, William Sweet, The Dialogue of Cultural Traditions: A Global Perspective, page 287
Examples of strangify in a sentence
- Stories strangify experiences and estrange the world so we can rise above it like smoke, if even for a moment, to catch a glimpse not only of what is happening — but what it all might mean.2016, Phil Cousineau, The Oldest Story In the World, page 4:
- To strangify is to engage in a non reduction of meaning that terrorizes all forms of equational logic, positive and negative.2018, Peter Mclaren, Revolutionary Multiculturalism:
- Unwillingness to appropriate other language and to strangify would mean self-contentment with, or self-enclosure in, one's own micro-world, cultural world, or religious world.2018, Ming Dong Gu, Why Traditional Chinese Philosophy Still Matters:
Forms of strangify
| third-person singular present | strangifies |
|---|---|
| present participle | strangifying |
| past participle | strangified |
| past | strangified |
Origin of strangify
From strange + -ify.
Questions about strangify
- What does strangify mean?
- Strangify means to make strange or exotic.
- How do you use strangify in a sentence?
- Stories strangify experiences and estrange the world so we can rise above it like smoke, if even for a moment, to catch a glimpse not only of what is happening — but what it all might mean.
- What part of speech is strangify?
- Strangify is a verb.
- What is the past tense of strangify?
- The past tense of strangify is strangified.
Words near strangify in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: strangify (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: “strangify.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/strangify. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.