idealize

With a book by Jessie Nelson adapted from Adrienne Shelly‘s film script, “Waitress” has a humanizing matter-of-factness about tropes that other theatrical stories about women often idealize.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 29, 2023

“What’s important is to not make a myth or idealize anyone, including our founder. If we made a myth out of him, we were wrong,” she said.

From Seattle Times ● Mar. 28, 2023

A number of Googlers I spoke with framed January’s job cuts—which took place via email—as a wake-up call for Googlers who still idealize their employer.

From Slate ● Feb. 9, 2023

The San Antonio artist doesn’t idealize her family background, however.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 15, 2022

Not much to idealize when you know your aunt is crying herself to sleep next door and nothing can be done.

From "Where Things Come Back" by John Corey Whaley

She idealizes having a big, happy family, but there are aspects of the world that give her pause, so she struggles with whether it’s morally OK to have children.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2024

Called "splitting," Behr defined this as "the person devalues and idealizes you or others."

From Salon ● Jan. 26, 2023

Like her, he idealizes love, remembering Bronco Henry as part of a bygone generation of “real men” and attributing all his ranching success to his deceased lover.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 25, 2021

Because he was the only straight, cis man I ever dated, she idealizes him.

From Slate ● Jan. 7, 2021

Just as he idealizes Caroline, he paints the Loyers as the perfect mother and daughter.

From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman

Worried about its future and often nostalgic for an idealized past, it's fair to say that much of America saw itself in Dolly Parton.

From Barron's ● Aug. 25, 2026

The concept is illustrated by the Carnot cycle, an idealized model that defines the maximum theoretical efficiency of a heat engine by carefully regulating the movement of heat between hot and cold regions.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 11, 2026

“Everyone wants you to be an idealized version of … not even yourself, but of what they want you to be,” she says.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026

But it isn’t returning to its past image, which some people considered inappropriate and off-color by focusing too much on idealized images of beauty.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 21, 2026

Over the next several months, as it often happens, I managed to erase the story’s flaws from my memory, taking pride in a shadowy, idealized recollection of its virtues.

From "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien

This verdict is in keeping with the tenor of the last 50 years of classical scholarship, which has moved past—perhaps too far past—any idealizing visions of Pericles and Athens.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 10, 2026

“But I would advise against idealizing him like he is the new Benito Juárez, or to say that—just because he is Indigenous—he cannot be criticized.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 4, 2025

Yes — but I don’t think I’m idealizing the past by suggesting that there used to be more restraint, more opprobrium associated with selling out too obviously.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 21, 2022

By stigmatizing high art and idealizing popular taste, they claim to be striking a blow for true democracy — and not just pandering, as advertisers, politicians and the media do as a matter of course.

From Salon ● Dec. 25, 2021

Not a lot, but enough to keep a dreamer from idealizing the object of his long fascination.

From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor