Definition of "realize"

realize

/ˈɹi.ə.laɪz/

verb
third-person singular simple present realizes, present participle realizing, simple past and past participle realized
1. (slightly formal, transitive) To make real; to convert from the imaginary or fictitious into reality; to bring into real existence
  Quotations
  We realize what Archimedes had only in hypothesis, weighting a single grain against the globe of earth.
  1665, Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica
2. (transitive) To become aware of (a fact or situation, especially of something that has been true for a long time).
  Quotations
  Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?
  2002, The Flaming Lips, Do You Realize??
  No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or […] . And at last I began to realize in my harassed soul that all elusion was futile, and to take such holidays as I could get, when he was off with a girl, in a spirit of thankfulness.
  1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., page 46
3. (transitive) To cause to seem real to other people.
  Quotations
  Many coincidences […] soon begin to appear in them [Greek inscriptions] which realize ancient history to us.
  1881, Benjamin Jowett, Thucydides Translated into English
4. (transitive) To sense vividly or strongly; to make one's own in thought or experience.
  Quotations
  Over the mind of the tourist, visiting the Old World for the first time,—countries where have transpired thrilling events recorded in history, what an immensity of thought and feeling sweeps! It was thus with Natalie; she could not realize that she was treading in the footsteps of royalty, who living in long past days, had held sway over this land, had looked upon this land of "merrie England" as their home.
  1859, Ferna Vale, Natalie; or, A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds
  That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
  1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, section II
  Drawings appear fully realized in his mind's eye at a furious rate, before he even picks up his pencil.
  1996, Alan Brown, Audrey Hepburn's Neck
5. (transitive, business) To acquire as an actual possession; to obtain as the result of plans and efforts; to gain; to get
  Quotations
  Knighthood was not beyond the reach of any man who could by diligent thrift realise a good estate.
  1849, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 1, in The History of England from the Accession of James II, volume I, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, page 38
6. (transitive, business, finance) To convert any kind of property into money, especially property representing investments, such as shares, bonds, etc.
  Quotations
  Wary men took the alarm, and began to realize, a word now first brought into use to express the conversion of ideal property into something real.
  1855, Washington Irving, “[A Time of Unexampled Prosperity.] The Great Mississippi Bubble.”, in Wolfert’s Roost and Other Papers, […], New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam & Co., […], page 174
7. (transitive, business, obsolete) To convert into real property; to make real estate of.
8. (transitive, linguistics) To turn an abstract linguistic object into actual language, especially said of a phoneme's conversion into speech sound.
  Quotations
  Many (probably most) speakers realize it as [ø] or [œ] in other contexts as well. In Midi French, schwa is realized more frequently than in northern varieties, including in word-final position, where it generally (but not always) corresponds to […]
  2016, Martin Maiden, The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages, Oxford University Press, page 297

Definition of "realize"

realize

verb

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