How to Use civilize in a Sentence

civilize

verb

• They believed it was their duty to civilize the native people.
• Her parents hoped that boarding school might civilize her some.
• He is credited with civilizing the treatment of people with mental illnesses.
• So why not spend it in the civilizing thrall of great art?
  — Marley Marius, Vogue, 25 Oct. 2019
• Captive Africans who came here didn’t need to be civilized.
  — John Blake, CNN, 18 June 2023
• During the 1870s, Fred Harvey did more to civilize the Wild West than anyone with a six-shooter.
  — Roger Naylor, The Arizona Republic, 10 Sep. 2020
• Down a flight of stairs, away from the cars, the riverwalk was designed as a refuge from the hubbub, a civilizing force in the urban push and jangle.
  — Mary Schmich, chicagotribune.com, 17 May 2018
• The mission to civilize some in the NFL has obviously fallen on deaf ears.
  — Herbie Teope, NOLA.com, 8 Mar. 2018
• Schools are usually the last chance to civilize children if their family has failed to do so.
  — WSJ, 21 Dec. 2018
• But why should this central civilizing truth, almost a cliché, need C. S. Lewis’s efforts and even my own?
  — M. D. Aeschliman, National Review, 7 Oct. 2017
• At the heart of both lie an unwillingness to confront the sins of the nation, by two countries that prefer to see themselves as moral arbiters and civilizing forces.
  — Rachel Withers, Slate Magazine, 24 Aug. 2017
• Crusoe keeps Friday as a servant, implying that the best way to civilize a savage is to subordinate him.
  — Pallavi Kottamasu, BostonGlobe.com, 2 June 2018
• In their efforts to civilize the workplace, however, Roosevelt and his allies didn’t set up a new institution for workers to speak through.
  — Caleb Crain, The New Yorker, 19 Aug. 2019
• The city and the waterfront corporation need to take a more active role in civilizing Delaware Avenue.
  — Inga Saffron, Philly.com, 28 June 2018
• Such road diets aren’t novel as an effort to civilize urban thoroughfares.
  — Kevin Spear, OrlandoSentinel.com, 27 Feb. 2018
• This depiction of Ivanka and Melania as civilizing forces on Trump—a ridiculous assertion disproven over and again—is in part why so many women voted for a raving misogynist in the first place.
  — Jessica Valenti, Marie Claire, 1 June 2017
• This depiction of Ivanka and Melania as civilizing forces on Trump—a ridiculous assertion disproven over and again—is in part why so many women voted for a raving misogynist in the first place.
  — Jessica Valenti, Marie Claire, 1 June 2017
• By 1912, the vast majority of states had adopted practices intended to civilize voting.
  — Kate Keller, Smithsonian, 15 June 2018
• For reasons too boringly intricate to explain, he is summoned to our modern world to fight once again, but his methods of dealing justice are Old Testament enough to alarm a bunch of other caped crusaders, who swoop in to try to civilize him.
  — David Sims, The Atlantic, 19 Oct. 2022
• Gardens civilize our relationship with nature, but only barely so; there’s always the serpent of surprise lurking somewhere in the shrubbery.
  — Christoph Irmscher, WSJ, 20 Dec. 2021
• The expedition, composed of a young Chilean mestizo, an American mercenary, and led by a reckless British lieutenant, soon turns into a ‘civilizing’ raid.
  — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 24 May 2023
• This project - relatively small in comparison to that of building the two new bridges - deserves to be celebrated locally and to serve as a national example of how to civilize the interstates in cities.
  — Steven Litt, cleveland.com, 13 Aug. 2017
• Just as the United States had conquered the American West, the nation would subdue, civilize, and remake international relations.
  — Daniel Bessner, Harper’s Magazine , 22 June 2022
• Mr. Ricoeur’s work, the newspaper Le Monde most recently pointed out, is shot through with apparent paradoxes, which in reality expressed a kind of civilizing wish to find a middle ground.
  — Adam Nossiter, New York Times, 30 May 2017
• The island would magically civilize us into our best possible versions of ourselves.
  — Brie Dyas, House Beautiful, 18 Nov. 2016
• The island would magically civilize us into our best possible versions of ourselves.
  — Brie Dyas, House Beautiful, 18 Nov. 2016
• Fifth is fine for everything from low-speed economy cruising to long-legged and very heady running at the top end, where the turbo system's softening, civilizing effect on the five-cylinder's inherent high-rev tingle is especially nice.
  — Larry Griffin, Car and Driver, 22 May 2020
• The core question remains one of civilizing and whether the spread of urban space reduces the savagery of the wilderness or whether financial and legal and political institutions are the enemy of individual freedom.
  — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Nov. 2017
• Harsh as the surrounding environment is, the building single-handedly civilizes this corner.
  — Inga Saffron, Philly.com, 4 Apr. 2018
• The legislation reads like a 19th century missionary enterprise, a colonial experiment to civilize the brown folks.
  — Amro Ali, Time, 3 July 2018

Last Updated: 6 Dec 2024