v. Also æther-. [f. ETHEREAL (or -IAL) + -IZE.] trans. To make or render ethereal: a. To refine, exalt, or spiritualize, by removing all that is material or corporeal; also absol. b. To bring out the spirit or spiritual conception of. c. To give an ethereal appearance to.
1829. J. Wilson, in Blackw. Mag., XXV. 389. Every breath of air we draw is terrestrialized or etherealized by imagination.
1833. Lytton, England, IV. ii. (1840), 435. Wordsworth’s poetry is of all existing in the world the most calculated to refine, to etherealise, to exalt.
1850. Hawthorne, Scarlet Letter, xxiii. 305. So etherealized by spirit as he was. Ibid. (1852), Blithedale Rom., viii. 79. The clods of earth … were never etherealized into thought.
1856. Chamb. Jrnl., VI. 263. All silvered over and etherealised by moonlight.
1876. Gladstone, Homeric Synchr., 192. Difficult … to accept as history, or to etherialize and translate as myth.
1879. Geo. Eliot, Coll. Breakf. P., 796. Art’s creations … etherialized To least admixture of the grosser fact.
1882. A. Austin, Canons Poet. Crit., II. 41. If ever Thought was etherialized … it is in the foregoing passage.
