Paternalize
verb
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Verb
- 1 To make paternal; to place in a fatherly role. transitive
"To paternalize the government or make it more bureaucratic is in their judgment to repress private enterprise and to imitate the monarchical systems..."
- 2 control organizations, things etc. disregarding people's freedom and responsibility under guise and pretense of knowing what would be good and proper for them
Example
More examples"To paternalize the government or make it more bureaucratic is in their judgment to repress private enterprise and to imitate the monarchical systems..."
Etymology
From paternal + -ize.
More for "paternalize"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.