Definition of "moralize"
moralize
verb
third-person singular simple present moralizes, present participle moralizing, simple past and past participle moralized
(intransitive) To make moral reflections (on, upon, about or over something); to regard acts and events as involving a moral.
Quotations
[…] his Ladie reaching him a Marigold, he began to moralize of it thus merely. I meruaile the Poets that were so prodigall in painting the amorous affection of the Sunne to his Hyacinth, did neuer obserue the relation of loue twixt him and the Marigold:
1589, Robert Greene, Menaphon, London: Sampson Clarke, “Arcadia,”
One hoped, and the other despaired: they chose their own lots, and were righteously doomed to endure them. But you’ll not want to hear my moralising, Mr. Lockwood; you’ll judge, as well as I can, all these things:
1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], “chapter 17”, in Wuthering Heights, volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […]
I depended on Philip now, for I had nothing, not even seven cents for carfare. I could be certain, however, that he wouldn’t moralize at me, he’d set about dressing me, he’d scrounge a sweater among his neighborhood acquaintances […]
1991, Saul Bellow, “Something to Remember Me By”, in Something to Remember Me By: Three Tales, New York: Viking, page 206
(transitive) To say (something) expressing a moral reflection or judgment.
Quotations
“Unless I heard the whole repeated I cannot continue it,” she said. / “Yet it was quickly learned—‘soon gained, soon gone,’” moralized the tutor.
1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter 27, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder and Co., […]
(transitive) To render moral; to correct the morals of; to give the appearance of morality to.
Quotations
Let gratefull Aromatick odours burne,Let pious incense smoake, for the returneOf Great Flaminius, in whom abideMore Art, then raised Athens to her pride,More civill Ethicks he containe, then mayWell moralize all sauage India.
1647, Robert Baron, Erotopaignion, or, The Cyprian Academy, London, page 61
In estimating the value of cotton, its capacity to excite industry among the lower classes of people […] is of high importance. It has had a large share in moralizing the poor white people of the country.
1809, David Ramsay, chapter 11, in The History of South-Carolina: from Its First Settlement in 1670, to the Year 1808, volume 2, Charleston, page 449
He sees the idiocy of an educational system founded on the Greek lexicon and the wax-ended cane; on the other hand, he has no use for the new kind of school that is coming up in the ’fifties and ’sixties, the “modern” school, with its gritty insistence on “facts”. What, then, does he want? As always, what he appears to want is a moralised version of the existing thing—the old type of school, but with no caning, no bullying or underfeeding, and not quite so much Greek.
1940, George Orwell, “Charles Dickens”, in Sonia Orwell, Ian Angus, editors, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, volume 1, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, published 1968, page 426
(transitive) To give a moral quality to; to affect the moral quality of, either for better or worse.
Quotations
For since good and bad stars moralize not our actions, and neither excuse nor commend, acquit or condemn our good or bad deeds at the present or last bar […] not celestial figures, but virtuous schemes must denominate and state our actions.
1716, Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, Part 3, in Religio Medici; its sequel Christian Morals, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844, p. 211
The attempts which are made in such [school] courses [on ‘hygiene’] to make as many physiological phenomena as possible point a moral, and to suppress the rest, are reminiscent of the analogous attempts to moralize zoology which were made by the authors of mediaeval bestiaries.
1927, J. B. S. Haldane, “The Time Factor in Medicine”, in Possible Worlds and Other Essays, London: Chatto and Windus, published 1930
(transitive, obsolete) To apply to a moral purpose; to explain in a moral sense; to draw a moral from.
Quotations
[…] where the Place is obscure, and the Construction difficult, I take leave by paraphrase to give the Meaning: which is a method of times observed by the Septuagint, whose Version Moralizeth in the Greek, what was wrapp’d up in figures by the Hebrew.
1654, Henry King, The Psalmes of David from the New Translation of the Bible Turned into Meter, London: Humphrey Moseley, Preface
This Fable is so well known that it is Moralliz’d in a Common Proverb.
1692, Roger L’Estrange, “[The Fables of Æsop, &c.] Fab[le] Fable 76, A Dog in a Manger, Reflexion. (please specify the name of the fable.)”, in Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: […], London: […] R[ichard] Sare, […], page 75
I was going to moralize this fable, when our attention was called off to a warm dis
1766, [Oliver Goldsmith], “chapter 13”, in The Vicar of Wakefield: […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), Salisbury, Wiltshire: […] B. Collins, for F[rancis] Newbery, […]; reprinted London: Elliot Stock, 1885, page 126
(transitive, obsolete) To supply with moral lessons, teachings, or examples; to lend a moral to.
Quotations
Kind Nature’s charities his steps attend,In every babbling brook he finds a friend,While chast’ning thoughts of sweetest use, bestowedBy Wisdom, moralize his pensive road.
1793, William Wordsworth, “Pleasures of the Pedestrian”, in Poems by William Wordsworth: including Lyrical Ballads, and the Miscellaneous Pieces of the Author, volume 1, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, published 1815, page 70