v. [f. LIBERAL + -IZE. Cf. F. libéraliser.]
1. trans. To render liberal; to imbue with liberal ideas or principles; to make liberal-minded; to free from narrowness; to enlarge the intellectual range of. Also (nonce-use) to liberalize away, to do away with by such means.
1774. Burke, Amer. Tax., Sel. Wks. I. 123. He was bred to the law…; a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding, than all the other kinds of learning put together; but it is not apt … to open and to liberalize the mind exactly in the same proportion. Ibid. (1790), Fr. Rev., 148. We liberalize the church by an intercourse with the leading characters of the country.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., I. 341. If they do not break the proper bound, and liberalize away all true religion.
1830. De Quincey, R. Bentley, Wks. 1857, VII. 103. Classical education … liberalizes the mind.
1878. N. Amer. Rev., CXXVI. 521. The readiness with which he enlarged his needs and liberalized his habits to the standard he found here.
1898. J. E. C. Bodley, France, II. IV. i. 325, note. The Empire, for which, when liberalised, he predicted a glorious and popular career.
b. To make Liberal in politics.
1853. Lewis, Lett., 262. He is Liberalizing them, instead of their Torifying him.
1884. Manch. Exam., 2 Dec., 5/1. The small boroughs will go to liberalise the counties.
1887. Spectator, 30 July, 1014/2. The Conservative Party has been liberalised … by the Household Suffrage Act.
c. To incline to liberality. nonce-use.
1890. ‘R. Boldrewood,’ Col. Reformer (1891), 310. Liberalise the ideas of Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton.
2. intr. To favor liberal opinions; be or become liberal in one’s ideas or principles.
1791–1823. D’Israeli, Cur. Lit. (1858), III. 248. In the Memoirs of James the Second … the catholic reasons and liberalises like a modern philosopher.
a. 1836. Froude, Mem. (1849), 152. We were all liberalizing as we were going on, making too much of this world, and losing our hold upon the next.
[1839. Lady Lytton, Cheveley (ed. 2), I. viii. 184. Demosthenes said of the Pythian oracle, that it philipized; and from the moment the Reform Bill began to thrive, Herbert Grimstone liberalized.]
1848. Tait’s Mag., XV. 828. Russia must liberalize, or be convulsed.
Hence Liberalized, Liberalizing ppl. adjs. Also Liberalizer, one who or something that liberalizes.
1820. Foster, Ess. Evils Pop. Ignor., 158. Liberalized feeling and deportment.
1824. Ann. Reg., 40. The Irish clergy,… an educated, liberalized, well-conducted order of men.
1833. J. H. Newman, Lett. (1871), I. 490. The liberalisers in and out of Parliament.
1850. Grote, Greece, II. lxviii. VIII. 634. Intolerance is the natural weed of the human bosom, though its growth or development may be counteracted by liberalizing causes.
1860. Emerson, Cond. Life, Culture, Wks. (Bohn), II. 368. Archery, cricket, gun and fishing-rod … are all educators, liberalizers.
1868. M. Pattison, Academ. Org., v. 259. The course was not truly, what it claimed to be, liberalising.
1884. Chr. Commw., 24 Jan., 347/2. Notions that it [Sunday] is but a relaxed or liberalised Jewish Sabbath.
