Newmanize
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To translate in a manner that makes use of archaisms and which tends to closely follow the original rather than modernize the language in the translation. derogatory
"To grunt and sweat under a weary load does perfectly well where it comes in Shakspeare: but if the translator of Homer, who will hardly have wound up our minds to the pitch at which these words of Hamlet find them, were to employ, when he has to speak of Homer's heroes under the load of calimity, this figure of 'grunting' and 'sweating' we should say, he Newmanizes, and his diction would offend us."
Example
More examples"To grunt and sweat under a weary load does perfectly well where it comes in Shakspeare: but if the translator of Homer, who will hardly have wound up our minds to the pitch at which these words of Hamlet find them, were to employ, when he has to speak of Homer's heroes under the load of calimity, this figure of 'grunting' and 'sweating' we should say, he Newmanizes, and his diction would offend us."
Etymology
Coined as Newman + -ize by Matthew Arnold in a lecture at Oxford on November 30, 1861 (published in 1862 as On Translating Homer: Last Words) in which he criticized a translation by Francis William Newman.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.