popularization
(ˌpɒpjʊləraɪˈzeɪʃən)
[f. popularize + -ation. So F. popularisation.]
The action of popularizing or fact of being popularized, in various senses: see the verb. spec. (in sense 2 c of the vb.), the adapting of ideas or theories to the level of an educated but non-specialist public; freq. with derogatory connotations, the over-simplification of a subject to suit popular taste (cf. popular a. (n.) 4 a). Also, the result or product of this process.
| 1797 W. Taylor in Monthly Rev. XXII. 546 The popularization of the measure. 1801 ― in Monthly Mag. XI. 301 The popularization of those..doctrines. 1860 Marsh Eng. Lang. 449 The universality of literature, its general popularization by the press. 1866 Sat. Rev. 21 Apr. 457/2 An advance..towards the popularization of the constituencies. 1887 Saintsbury Hist. Elizab. Lit. xii. (1890) 453 The popularisation of the pamphlet led the way to periodical writing. 1926 Wyndham Lewis Art of Being Ruled xiii. iv. 423 It is plainly the popularization of science that is responsible for the fever and instability apparent on all sides. 1951 M. McLuhan Mech. Bride (1967) 28/1 The lethal psychological and social effects..arise not from science but from its popularization. 1962 Listener 18 Jan. 119/1 Popularization is, then, a word with a moral identity... It implies..that the cases it describes are those where the subject is misrepresented by this treatment; where the truth of the matter has been diluted, if not falsified. 1973 Nature 23 Mar. 280/1 This book is more than an extraordinarily successful popularization. 1974 B. Pearce tr. Amin's Accumulation on World Scale II. 591 Mandel places alongside a popularization of Capital a diatribe against the Soviet bureaucracy. 1977 M. Cohen Sensible Words 157 John W. Yolton..discusses Gildon's Deist's Manual (1705) as an important imitation and popularization of Locke's epistemology. |