v. [a. F. verbaliser (16th c.; = Pg. verbalizar), or f. VERBAL a. + -IZE.]
1. intr. To use many words; to talk diffusely; to be verbose.
1609. [Bp. W. Barlow], Answ. Nameless Cath., Ded. p. vii. Verbalize he can, dispute he cannot.
1648. Hexham, II. App., Verbaliseren, to Verbalize, or make a speech.
1721. Bailey, Verbalise, to be tedious in Discourse, to make many Words.
1889. J. M. Robertson, Ess. Crit. Meth., 130. Mr. Lowell verbalizes as to Duty being an eternal harmony.
2. trans. To make into a verb.
1659. O. Walker, Instr. Oratory, 31. So nouns … are sometimes verbalized; as, to complete, to contrary, to experience.
1818. Q. Rev., XIX. 207. To supply the place of the nouns thus verbalized Mr. Keats, with great fecundity, spawns new ones.
1860. G. P. Marsh, Lect. Eng. Lang., viii. English no longer exercises … the protean gift of transformation, which could at pleasure verbalize a noun.
3. To express in words.
1875. Dora Greenwell, Liber Humanitatis, 42. The man of the world, whose creed has been thus … verbalized, ‘There’s nothing new, and nothing true, and it’s no matter.’
1886. Gurney, etc., Phantasms of Living, II. 23. It is more natural … to visualise it,… than to verbalise it in some imagined or remembered phrase.
Hence Verbalizing vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1824. J. Gilchrist, Etym. Interpr., 90. What that something more or verbalizing property is, he either could not or would not inform the world.
1869. W. G. T. Shedd, Homiletics, vi. 133. If the formation of the plan is merely a verbalizing process.
1880. Meredith, Tragic Com., iv. (1892), 48. A burst unnoticed in the incessantly verbalizing buzz of a continental supper-table.
