v. [f. BRUTAL a. + -IZE.]
1. intr. To live or become like a brute.
1726. Addison, Freeholder, No. 5. He mixed … with his countrymen, brutalized with them in their habit and manners.
1749. Walpole, Lett. H. Mann (1834), II. ccviii. 303. If possible we brutalize more and more.
1810. Coleridge, Friend (1865), 152. To discuss on how much a person may vegetate or brutalize in the back settlements of the republic.
a. 1859. De Quincey, Ceylon, Wks. XII. 26. Man does not brutalize, by possibility, in pure insulation.
2. trans. To render brutal or inhuman; to imbue with a brutal nature.
a. 1704. T. Brown, To Lumenissa, 113. Which … Were but at once to Brutalize Mankind.
1833. Ht. Martineau, Fr. Wines & Pol., iv. 54. The efforts that were made to infatuate and brutalize the people.
1885. A. J. C. Hare, Russia, i. 19. That which does most to brutalize the lower orders in Russia is their constant habit of intemperance.
3. To treat as a brute, or brutally.
1879. Stevenson, Trav. Cevennes, 15. God forbid … that I should brutalise this innocent creature.
1885. Mrs. Lynn Linton, Christ. Kirkland, I. 274. An extremely timid man, who looked as if he would have died outright had he been brutalized in any way.
Hence Brutalized, Brutalizing ppl. adjs.
1800. Southey, Lett. (1856), I. 106. The bloody and brutalising spirit of Popery.
1803. Bristed, Pedest. Tour, I. 455. The coarse and brutalized indulgences of mere unalloyed sensuality.
1884. Sir S. St. John, Hayti, v. 183. The masses [in Hayti] are given up to this brutalising [Vaudoux] worship.
