v. Also 7–8 villanize, 9 villainise. [f. VILLAIN sb.]
1. trans. To render villainous; to debase or degrade.
1623. trans. Favine’s Theat. Hon., III. xii. 487. To blame or abuse Ladies … is … for a man to villanize and shame himselfe.
1700. Dryden, Wife of Bath’s T., 405. Were Virtue by Descent, a noble Name Could never villanize his Father’s Fame.
1745. Law, Consid. State World, II. 245. That those Writings which villanize Mankind have a pernicious tendency towards propagating and protecting Villany.
2. To treat or revile as a villain.
Cf. VILLAINIZER below.
1857. Sir F. Palgrave, Norm. & Eng., II. 437. Here in Rouen had he been villainized, disgraced, hooted, imprisoned, bullied, degraded.
3. intr. To play the villain.
1882. Echo, 11 Feb., 3. Let us hope that … these gentlemen [sc. actors], whose mission it is to dabble in crime…, will in future ‘villainise’ no more.
Hence Villainizing vbl. sb. Also Villainizer, one who reviles or defames.
1599. Sandys, Europæ Spec. (1603), P iij b. What renouncers of God, blasphemers of his onely begotten sonne, villanisers of his Saints.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., I. v. § 31. 890. The foundation [of the atheistic ethics and politics] is first laid in the villanizing of Humane Nature.
1693. Bentley, Serm., i. 13. In the debasing and villainizing of Mankind to the condition of Beasts.
