Ideologizes

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Interprets or explains something according to a particular system of ideas or beliefs
2. Frames events or concepts through the lens of a specific ideology
3. Adopts a viewpoint that aligns information with a set of beliefs or doctrines

Etymology: "Ideologizes" is the third-person singular form of "ideologize," so its history is essentially the history of the verb it inflects. That verb is formed from "ideology," which came into English in the late 1790s, when the French philosopher Antoine Destutt de Tracy coined "idéologie" as the name for a proposed science of ideas. He built the word from Greek "idea," meaning a form or notion, and the suffix "-logy," meaning the study of something. The original sense was a rigorous, almost scientific inquiry into how thoughts arise, which is a long way from the modern sense of a system of political or social beliefs. The shift came mostly in the nineteenth century, when critics, Napoleon among them, used the term as an insult for impractical theorists, and later writers such as Marx and Engels used "ideology" to mean the distorted beliefs that a social class uses to justify its position. The verb "ideologize" followed from this later meaning, with the suffix "-ize" added to form a verb meaning to treat something through the lens of an ideology.

Synonyms: theorizes, philosophizes