moralize

verb

1. (intransitive)To make moral reflections (on, upon, about or over something); to regard acts and events as involving a moral.

   “1589, Robert Greene, Menaphon, London: Sampson Clarke, “Arcadia,” […] his Ladie reaching him a Marigold, he began to moralize of it thus merely. I meruaile the Poets that were so prodigall in painting the amorous affection of the Sunne to his Hyacinth, did neuer obserue the relation of loue twixt him and the Marigold:”

   “1741, Samuel Richardson, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, London: S. Richardson and J. Osborn,, Volume 3, Letter 8, p. 38, […] I shall not make an unworthy Correspondent altogether; for I can get into thy grave Way, and moralize a little now-and-then:”

   “One hoped, and the other despaired: they chose their own lots, and were righteously doomed to endure them. But you’ll not want to hear my moralising, Mr. Lockwood; you’ll judge, as well as I can, all these things:”

   “The usual conduct of the spoilt child! Had she not witnessed it, and moralized upon it, in other families?”

   “I depended on Philip now, for I had nothing, not even seven cents for carfare. I could be certain, however, that he wouldn’t moralize at me, he’d set about dressing me, he’d scrounge a sweater among his neighborhood acquaintances […]”

2. (transitive)To say (something) expressing a moral reflection or judgment.

   ““Unless I heard the whole repeated, I cannot continue it,” she said. / “Yet it was quickly learned, ‘soon gained, soon gone,’” moralized the tutor.”

   “1929, Virginia Woolf, “Geraldine and Jane” in The Common Reader, Second Series, London: The Hogarth Press, 1935, p. 191, “The more one loves, the more helpless one feels”, she moralised.”

   “A Cake Related Fatphobic Incident — or CRFI for short — is that moment when it's time to eat delicious cake, and an otherwise joyous experience gets ruined by a moralizing impulse.”

3. (transitive)To render moral; to correct the morals of; to give the appearance of morality to.

   “Let gratefull Aromatick odours burne, Let pious incense smoake, for the returne Of Great Flaminius, in whom abide More Art, then raised Athens to her pride, More civill Ethicks he containe, then may Well moralize all sauage India.”

   “In estimating the value of cotton, its capacity to excite industry among the lower classes of people […] is of high importance. It has had a large share in moralizing the poor white people of the country.”

   “He sees the idiocy of an educational system founded on the Greek lexicon and the wax-ended cane; on the other hand, he has no use for the new kind of school that is coming up in the ’fifties and ’sixties, the “modern” school, with its gritty insistence on “facts”. What, then, does he want? As always, what he appears to want is a moralised version of the existing thing—the old type of school, but with no caning, no bullying or underfeeding, and not quite so much Greek.”

   “Far more dangerous than crimes of passion are the crimes of idealism—the crimes which are instigated, fostered and moralized by hallowed words.”

4. (transitive)To give a moral quality to; to affect the moral quality of, either for better or worse.

   “1716, Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, Part 3, in Religio Medici; its sequel Christian Morals, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844, p. 211, For since good and bad stars moralize not our actions, and neither excuse nor commend, acquit or condemn our good or bad deeds at the present or last bar […] not celestial figures, but virtuous schemes must denominate and state our actions.”

   “The attempts which are made in such [school] courses [on ‘hygiene’] to make as many physiological phenomena as possible point a moral, and to suppress the rest, are reminiscent of the analogous attempts to moralize zoology which were made by the authors of mediaeval bestiaries.”

   “He makes no attempt to moralize his gods or to pass any moral judgement upon them.”

   “With the advent of Christianity, which imposed more moralized notions of disease […], a closer fit between disease and “victim” gradually evolved.”

5. (obsolete, transitive)To apply to a moral purpose; to explain in a moral sense; to draw a moral from.

   “Did he not moralize this spectacle?”

   “[…] where the Place is obscure, and the Construction difficult, I take leave by paraphrase to give the Meaning: which is a method of times observed by the Septuagint, whose Version Moralizeth in the Greek, what was wrapp’d up in figures by the Hebrew.”

   “This Fable is so well known that it is Moralliz’d in a Common Proverb.”

   “I was going to moralize this fable, when our attention was called off to a warm dispute between my wife and Mr. Burchell […]”

   “In the Fairy Queen, allegory is wrought upon chivalry, and the feats and figments of Arthur’s round table are moralised.”

6. (obsolete, transitive)To supply with moral lessons, teachings, or examples; to lend a moral to.

   “Kind Nature’s charities his steps attend, In every babbling brook he finds a friend, While chast’ning thoughts of sweetest use, bestowed By Wisdom, moralize his pensive road.”