civilize

In “Panorama,” two dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet, Guillaume Diop and Germain Louvet, and one from the cabaret world, Soa de Muse, attempt to civilize the mural in reverse.

From New York Times ● Nov. 16, 2022

By the fifth century BCE, some of the larger villages of Macedon grew big enough to be considered cities, and elite Macedonians made efforts to civilize their country in the style of the southern Greeks.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2020

Without dogs, human beings would not have been able to civilize, as they did.

From Salon ● Nov. 10, 2019

Most of “Darlin’ ” follows the title character, as she first resists the church’s plan to civilize her, then gradually begins to come around to the idea that she needs to be “saved.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2019

Then Miss Philips went to school and told Mr. Crabtree that she had a plan to civilize the Herdmans or, at least, one of them.

From "The Best School Year Ever" by Barbara Robinson

We sense early on, from Mortensen’s delicate handling of their courtship, that this isn’t some musty rehash of the trope where she civilizes him and he domesticates her.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 31, 2024

But there she is, one of the immortal characters of literature, and how can you not fall in love with somebody who civilizes savage people by telling them stories?

From New York Times ● Sep. 4, 2015

Far from revealing our barbarism, fighting civilizes us, Gottschall writes.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 15, 2015

It opened up a discussion about anonymity, pseudonymity and whether using real names civilizes the Internet.

From Forbes ● Oct. 15, 2012

It perhaps is rather a waste of time arranging all these vases and baskets of flowers every day, but they are very nice to look at, and I think it civilizes one.”

From Six to Sixteen A Story for Girls by Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

Wilson, the food writer, said that lunch is more civilized.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026

This is a civilized world we live in now.

From Slate ● Jul. 27, 2026

You would respect the movie more if it stuck with its depraved indifference to civilized behavior, rather than attempting a death-bed conversion to decency.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

Those are traits that help define a psychopath, someone who lives among us but doesn’t have the empathy and ethics necessary to behave in a civilized, or even safe, fashion.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026

She told Chucha civilized people had to sleep on beds, coffins were for corpses.

From "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez

Heaney was born with a subject he often resisted, and “Digging” turns away from violence to the civilizing necessity of work.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025

Smith seems to want to say something about the civilizing influence of women and their survival in a world of unruly and domineering men.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 9, 2025

Colonialism, once equated by the West with civilizing progress, became synonymous with iniquity.

From New York Times ● Dec. 10, 2023

He cited Philippine national hero Jose Rizal’s description of justice “as the foremost virtue of the civilizing races. It subdues the barbarous nations while injustice arouses the weakest.”

From Seattle Times ● Mar. 2, 2023

“I placed this young man with you,” she says to me in a terrible quiet voice, “in the hopes that you might provide a civilizing influence. It appears that I was gravely mistaken.”

From "Orphan Train" by Christina Baker Kline