idealise BrE
idealize AmE

All civilisation has done is to teach us to pretend to idealise them.

Unlike many historical novelists, he does not idealise his subjects.

Any temptation to idealise the life of a ninth-century peasant should be resisted.

This time the hypnotherapist said, "People idealise a lost or far distant parent.

It was so pitilessly manifest she was resolved to idealise the situation whatever I might say.

By the end of the 19th century, Australian nationalists tended to idealise 'the bush' and its people.

Women idealise male qualities of aggression, ambition and sexual confidence so that we don't have to confront them in ourselves.

A bit like the way Claude uses light to idealise his landscapes - only Shaw is certainly not idealising of course.

I don't idealise the Guardian but I do tend to come to it first for information and ideas.

Moreover, we should certainly not idealise the traditional living conditions of Tibetans and Uighurs.

She does not idealise those groups, nor fall into the trap of soft-focusing on the 'New Man' as the answer to all women's problems.

The Misses Mould could idealise a player's habit, or a court-lady's petticoat, or even an act of parliament.

The approach was anathema to the skilled artists of his day, who decried his refusal to work from drawings and to idealise his figures.

Tolstoy tended to greatly idealise Russia's pre-Mongol past which made the traditional bylina characters almost superheroes.

O'Donnell has no hint of the Moral Majority about him but, though uncensorious, he doesn't idealise or try to act the shrink.'

(We might 'need' someone, cling to them, romanticise them, pity them, idealise them - but we cannot love them unless we love ourselves.)

In SCUM OF THE EARTH Koestler ceases to idealise the common people.

And under the force of this tradition we idealise the rugged and unmanageable, we find something heroic in rough clothes and hands, in bad manners, insensitive behaviour, and unsociableness.

It will almost certainly happen--it can almost certainly be prophesied--that in this saturnalia of sophistry there will at some time or other arise a sophist who desires to idealise cowardice.

The wastage of ill- health seemed to idealise the general character of the features, bringing out the unsuspected nobility of some, the strength of others, and in one case re- vealing an essentially comic aspect.

(EL) Madam President, I have a simple question to ask Mr Langen and Mr Hökmark, who like to idealise the debt crisis and obviously target socialist governments collectively:

Lithuanian nationalists, particularly in the 19th century, used the history of their wars with the Teutonic Order to idealise the heroism of the medieval Lithuanians, a very strong argument in support of preserving the Lithuanian language, history and culture.

Since his release, and inspired by a television programme he saw inside about an ex-con in Glasgow talking to schoolchildren about jail, Young has used his experiences of prison life to steer young people who may idealise and glamorise the criminal lifestyle towards a more fulfilling existence.

They are representative of the admiration he has for the British Army - which he never sought to idealise as in any way perfect - as in the poems collected in Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), and also show his interest in, and respect for the 'uneducated' classes.

To say this is not to idealize the working class.

It's clear from the very start that each idealizes the other.

"When young people live life their way, they idealize things from other countries," he said.

The very society he was trying to drop out of began idealizing him.

She was 18 and the kind of young working girl he tended to idealize.

Yet, the tough assessment of the present does not mean idealizing history.

We tend to believe that works of art should avoid idealizing anyone or anything.

She dances in a way that little girls should not be idealizing her for.

But I would say to him: the people who you want to idealize are not cooperating in very large numbers.

"Audiences want the ability to idealize themselves in the stars."

Men who are not free, he thought, always idealize their bondage.

To grow, the narrator must stop idealizing this world and its leaders.

"We tend to idealize those times now and keep forgetting what they were really like."

Of course a small child would idealize her father.

Because we can no longer idealize Wagner, he is more involving than ever.

Again, girls were more apt than boys to idealize their birth parents.

On the other hand, I think it's a film that idealizes women."

"Here he was, a 21-year-old, writing about love relationships and not idealizing them."

He must, he knew, take care not to idealize her.

We don't idealize the order that has settled on Europe.

She seemed determined to idealize him, he thought again.

Look at the way men like my father idealize the Civil War.

On one cup is the perfect lover or mate all people idealize.

They have a hard time idealizing their situation or maintaining any sort of conception that things could turn out well in the end.