mythicize, v.
(ˈmɪθɪsaɪz)
[f. mythic + -ize.]
trans. To turn into myth; to interpret mythically.
| 1840 W. H. Mill Observ. i. 58 Christ's death..his resurrection..are so mythicized as to drop the substance, making them ‘no individual, but a divine and eternal history’. 1863 Sat. Rev. 199 An English Bunsen or Strauss..may mythicize or transcendentalize either the Old Testament or the New. 1891 T. K. Cheyne Orig. Psalter 323 The storm-wind (mythicized sometimes as the cherub). |
Hence ˈmythicized ppl. a.; ˈmythicizing vbl. n. and ppl. a. Also ˈmythicizer.
| 1840 W. H. Mill. Observ. i. 4 The prepossession..with which the recent mythicizer of the Gospel undertakes his task. Ibid. 24 That mythicizing process. 1871 Farrar Witn. Hist. i. 25 If the Resurrection be merely a spiritual idea, or a mythicised hallucination. 1893 Fairbairn Christ in Mod. Theol. i. ii. iii. §4. 271 The unconsciously creative mythicizing imagination. |