symbolize

English

Alternative forms

• symbolise (UK)

Etymology

From Middle French symboliser.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɪmbəlaɪz/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Verb

symbolize (third-person singular simple present symbolizes, present participle symbolizing, simple past and past participle symbolized)

1. (transitive) To be symbolic of; to represent.

   Doves often symbolize peace.

   The broken chain symbolizes freedom.

   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion‎^[1]:

     The popular late Middle Ages fictional character Robin Hood, dressed in green to symbolize the forest, dodged fines for forest offenses and stole from the rich to give to the poor. But his appeal was painfully real and embodied the struggle over wood.

2. (transitive, intransitive) To use symbols; to represent ideas symbolically.
3. (transitive) To convert something into a symbol.
   • 1929, Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, page 365:

     The overwhelming majority of these poems consists of wedding-songs, intended for the various ceremonies of the wedding and the daily festivities of the first week after the wedding. But these are not wedding-songs in the ordinary sense. In them, the wedding is symbolized. The poet speaks, indeed, of bride and bridegroom. But thereby he in no sense signifies the young human pair, but rather, true to cabbalistic implication, he intends the bridegroom to be God while the bride is the personified people of Israel.

4. (intransitive, obsolete) To resemble each other in qualities or properties; to correspond; to harmonize.
   • 1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC:

     The pleasing of colour symbolizeth with the pleasing of any single tone to the ear; but the pleasing of order doth symbolize with harmony.

   • 1640, I. H. [i.e., James Howell], ΔΕΝΔΡΟΛΟΓΊΑ [DENDROLOGIA]. Dodona’s Grove, or, The Vocall Forrest, London: […] T[homas] B[adger] for H. Mosley [i.e., Humphrey Moseley] […], →OCLC:

     They both symbolize in this, that they love to look upon themselves through multiplying glasses.

5. (intransitive, obsolete) To hold the same faith; to agree.
   • 1824, George Stanley Faber, The Difficulties of Infidelity:

     The believers in pretended miracles have always previously symbolized with the performers of them.

Synonyms

• harmonize
• represent

Derived terms

• missymbolize
• nonsymbolizing
• resymbolize
• symbolizable
• symbolization
• symbolizer

Translations

to be symbolic of; to represent

Azerbaijani: rəmziləşdirmək, simvollaşdırmaq Belarusian: сімвалізава́ць impf or pf (simvalizavácʹ), сымбалізава́ць impf or pf (symbalizavácʹ) Bulgarian: символизи́рам (bg) (simvolizíram) Catalan: simbolitzar (ca) Chinese: Mandarin: 象徵 / 象征 (zh) (xiàngzhēng) Danish: symbolisere Dutch: symboliseren (nl) Esperanto: simboli Finnish: symboloida (fi), merkitä (fi), olla + genitive + vertauskuva French: symboliser (fr) Galician: simbolizar German: symbolisieren (de) Greek: συμβολίζω (el) (symvolízo) Hungarian: szimbolizál (hu), jelképez (hu), jelez (hu) Irish: siombalaigh Italian: simbolizzare Japanese: 象徴する (ja) (しょうちょうする, shōchō suru) Korean: 상징하다 (ko) (sangjinghada) Lithuanian: simbolizuoti Maltese: ssimbolizza, ssimboleġġa Polish: symbolizować (pl) impf Portuguese: simbolizar (pt) Romanian: simboliza (ro) Russian: символизи́ровать (ru) impf or pf (simvolizírovatʹ) Slovene: simbolizirati Spanish: simbolizar (es), parabolizar (es) Swedish: symbolisera (sv) Ukrainian: символізува́ти impf or pf (symvolizuváty) Welsh: symboleiddio (cy)