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visualize

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

WOTD – 26 April 2025

Etymology

From visual +‎ -ize (suffix forming verbs denoting the doing or making of what is denoted by the adjectives or nouns to which it is attached).[1]

Pronunciation

Verb

visualize (third-person singular simple present visualizes, present participle visualizing, simple past and past participle visualized) (American and Oxford British spelling)

  1. (transitive)
    1. To perceive (something) visually; to see.
      • 2023 December 13, Carrie Hodgin, Brian Slocum, “When is the Best Time to View the Meteor Shower? Everything to Know about the Geminids Meteor Shower”, in WXII-TV‎[1], Winston-Salem, N.C., archived from the original on 2023-12-14:
        Be sure to find an area far away from the city or street lights, the darker the better. Lean back or lie flat on your back with your feet facing south and visualize as much of the sky as possible. Most meteors appear as faint streaks in the sky.
    2. To depict (something) in a way which can be seen.
      to visualize data using a chart
      • 1925, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “[Literature and Art.] Morality and the Novel.”, in Edward D[avid] McDonald, editor, Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, London: William Heinemann, published 1936, →OCLC, page 527:
        When [Vincent] van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment in time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can. The vision on the canvas is a third thing, utterly intangible and inexplicable, the offspring of the sunflower itself and van Gogh himself.
      • 2005, Nicole R. Fleetwood, “Hip-hop Fashion, Masculine Anxiety, and the Discourse of Americana”, in Harry J. Elam, Jr., Kennell Jackson [Jr.], editors, Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, →ISBN, part 4 (Trafficking in Black Visual Images: Television, Film, and New Media), page 336:
        The black male model in the hoodie references the trope of the urban black menace so clearly visualized in the ghetto action films of the early 1990s as well as in contemporary music videos.
      • 2018, Kim Hong-hee, “Chan-Hyo BAE: Living on the Borderlines”, in Chan[-]hyo Bae, Existing in Costume, Seoul, South Korea: Museum of Photography, Seoul, →ISBN:
        By becoming a male-to-female crossdresser, Chan-Hyo BAE gains insight into his identity under dual oppression. Out of the desire to know himself better, he boldly breaks into the regional differences between the East and West, the time differences between the past and present, and the gender differences between man and woman. […] Bae visualizes such differences and exposes the fallacy through his deviant, transgressional work, Existing in Costume.
    3. To form a mental picture of (something); to picture (something) in the mind; to envisage.
      Coordinate terms: audialize, auralize, kinesthetize, olfactorize, tactilize, tactualize
      • 1899, F. F. Leighton, “‘In My Mind’s Eye, Horatio’”, in Life and Books, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin […], →OCLC, page 13:
        In our own poetry we get from [Geoffrey] Chaucer the first instance of self-analysis and description, the first case of visualising self.
      • 1921 October, Lynden Macassey, “Labour and the League of Nations […] [book reviews]”, in Harold Cox, editor, The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal, volume 234, number 478, London: Longmans, Green & Co.; New York, N.Y.: Leonard Scott Publication Company, →OCLC, page 249:
        The humanitarian, frequently ignoring hard reality, visualises one cosmopolitan community where justice and social sympathy measured in terms of some one set of units reign supreme.
      • 1948 October, Dodie Smith, chapter III, in I Capture the Castle, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC, part I (The Sixpenny Book: March), page 33:
        And though I can still see the shape of her that day huddled on the steps, her back view when we were in the car, her brown tweed suit and squashy felt hat, I can't visualize her face at all. When I try to, I just see the photograph I have of her.
      • 1950 September, “Centenary of the Royal Border Bridge”, in The Railway Magazine, London: Tothill Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 637:
        Trains have increased in weight far beyond anything visualised when the bridge was designed, but it has never undergone any major structural alterations, and continues to carry main-line traffic without weight restriction.
      • 1950 October, R. A. Marshall, “Kuala Lumpur, an Important Malayan Railway Centre”, in The Railway Magazine, London: Tothill Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 706:
        Possible developments such as electric or diesel suburban services may be visualised when the town has grown sufficiently to justify them.
    4. (chiefly medicine) To make (a hidden or unclear body part, process, or object) visible by optical methods (such as endoscopy, magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound, or X-rays), or other techniques.
      Antonym: hide
      Hyponym: image (verb)
      • 1949 June, Thomas W. Williams, James M. Benson, “Summary”, in Preliminary Investigation of the Use of Afterglow for Visualizing Low-density Compressible Flows (Technical Note; 1900), Washington, D.C.: National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, →OCLC, page 1:
        An investigation is described in which the phenomena of afterglow were utilized to make visible the low-density supersonic flows of various gases. […] The afterglow is shown to be effective in visualizing some of the features of the flow in this range of low densities where it is difficult or impracticable to obtain comparable results with schlieren methods.
      • 2003, International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements, Image Quality in Chest Radiography (ICRU Report; 70), Ashford, Kent: Nuclear Technology Publishing, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 84:
        When small masses are to be detected, it is necessary to visualise as much of the lung as possible with as little structured noise as possible. This is accomplished with high-voltage, wide-latitude, image recording and possibly beam equalisation.
  2. (intransitive)
    1. To perceive something visually.
      • 1919, James Oliver Curwood, chapter 10, in Nomads of the North: A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC, page 129:
        His first impression was that he had tackled a dozen Oochaks instead of one. Beyond that first impression his mind did not work, nor did his eyes visualize.
    2. To form a mental picture of something; to picture something in the mind.

Alternative forms

Derived terms

Translations

to make (a hidden or unclear body part, process, or object) visible by optical methods or other techniques

References

  1. ^ “visualize, v.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2025; “visualize, v.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

Portuguese

Pronunciation

 
  • (Brazil) IPA(key): /vi.zu.aˈli.zi/ [vi.zʊ.aˈli.zi], (faster pronunciation) /vi.zwaˈli.zi/
    • (Southern Brazil) IPA(key): /vi.zu.aˈli.ze/ [vi.zʊ.aˈli.ze], (faster pronunciation) /vi.zwaˈli.ze/
 

Verb

visualize

  1. inflection of visualizar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative
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