How to Use infantilize in a Sentence

infantilize

verb
Definition of infantilizenext
  • The ash barrels lining the street and the ramshackle buildings and the friendly visitors to the poor dominate and infantilize them.
    — Longreads, 20 July 2019
  • Yet both Chozick and Alter refer to Clinton by her first name alone — a practice long used to dismiss and infantilize the person being named.
    — New York Times, 18 May 2018
  • All of this impacts the bottom line: When leaders infantilize those reporting to them, there’s no room left for risk-taking or learning from mistakes.
    — Lisa Schmidt, Forbes, 21 May 2021
  • In other offspring news, the president managed to degrade and infantilize what is by all accounts his favorite child.
    — Lynn Yaeger, Vogue, 10 Sep. 2017
  • Jokes aside, fans have interpreted this lyric as a critique of predatory men who infantilize women.
    — Alyssa Bailey, ELLE, 20 Oct. 2022
  • The church also tends to misunderstand, infantilize and even demonize those who question.
    — The Salt Lake Tribune, 18 Aug. 2022
  • One need not infantilize mothers to acknowledge that strong societal forces can impair their moral vision, particularly for the very young and vulnerable.
    — Bethel McGrew, National Review, 27 Jan. 2022
  • In the absence of hard numbers, RTO demands can look like overbearing and infantilizing attempts to micromanage employees who are already performing well.
    — Simon Willis, Fortune, 5 Apr. 2023
  • Instead, the modern era is full of clichéd memes of wise owls and adorable otters superimposed with slogans that infantilize or spread misinformation about actual animal behavior.
    — Jeff Vandermeer, The Atlantic, 9 May 2017
  • These kitschy activities infantilize what ought to be a rigorous pursuit of professional competency.
    — Daniel Buck, WSJ, 19 Aug. 2022
  • His position that nanny-state efforts to override markets infantilize the governed by precluding decision makers’ responses to prices is consistent with his position that government lacks the information needed to manage scarcity.
    — Los Angeles Times, 16 Sep. 2021
  • But that's simultaneously infantilizing adult audiences and leaving kids out.
    — Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 19 Apr. 2023
  • Movies can overromanticize, infantilize or instill incongruously adult wisdom in young characters.
    — Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, 22 Apr. 2022
  • Nina’s ceaseless obsession with perfection is exacerbated by her infantilizing mother and domineering director, sending her spiraling into crippling paranoia.
    — Men's Health, 17 Mar. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'infantilize.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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