Lusitanize

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To make Portuguese or more Portuguese-like. transitive

    "Traders and governors attempted to lusitanize Goa and Macao for centuries."

  2. 2
    To become Portuguese or more Portuguese-like. intransitive

    "Their sandwiches are lusitanized by frying the meat with copious garlic and covering everything with thick slabs of red pepper paste."

  3. 3
    To translate or adapt into the Portuguese language. transitive

    "The poet Camões used the lusitanized plural form cafres in the fifth canto of his 1572 poem Os Lusíadas."

Synonyms

All synonyms
portuguesify

Example

More examples

"Traders and governors attempted to lusitanize Goa and Macao for centuries."

Etymology

From Lusitanian + -ize, ultimately from Latin Lusitania (“pre-Roman and Roman Portugal”), used archaistically in New Latin and English in reference to modern Portugal. Partially formed on the model of more common terms like gallicize and partially as a calque of Portuguese lusitanizar, from lusitano (“Lusitanian, Portuguese”) + -izar.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.