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rationalize
in a sentence
grouped by contextual meaning

show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • She shouldn't have spent so much money on the shoes, but she rationalized the expenditure because they were on sale.
    rationalized = justified (as good or reasonable)
  • I hate that I let myself fall into that mind-set of trying to rationalize his death.   (source)
    rationalize = make seem reasonable
  • Tyler talked for a long time, moving through the events quickly but lingering in a wasteland of rationalization and self-recrimination.   (source)
    rationalization = thinking of excuses to explain bad behavior
  • He rationalized that he was so bewildered upon his arrival that he allowed such a thing.   (source)
    rationalized = excused bad behavior as reasonable
  • I was afraid I'd deliberate, ruminate, agonize, rationalize, and talk myself into not going.   (source)
    rationalize = think of an excuse
  • "Is that how you rationalize it?" says Risa, "Making yourself believe we'll be happier?"   (source)
    rationalize = think of a good excuse for
  • It seems they are off to Ivanovo to rationalize kulaks and collectivize tractors, and what have you.   (source)
    rationalize = make seem reasonable
  • But Wes rationalized. I am not actually selling drugs. All I'm doing is talking into a headset.   (source)
    rationalized = used reason to make excuses for bad behavior
  • This lady's grandson might be facing life imprisonment without parole, but given the overwhelming number of death penalty cases on our docket, I couldn't rationalize taking on his case.   (source)
    rationalize = think of a good excuse for
  • IF KENNEDY CAN RATIONALIZE.   (source)
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  • She said I was rationalizing.   (source)
    rationalizing = excusing something bad (as good or reasonable)
  • My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life.   (source)
    rationalizing = using reason to make an excuse
  • She'd always thought he was just rationalizing.   (source)
    rationalizing = using reason to make something bad seem reasonable
  • The bulge, he rationalized, was caused by all the new equipment they jammed into these things.   (source)
    rationalized = excused (as good or reasonable)
  • Or she rationalizes, "I call him when he calls me."   (source)
    rationalizes = excuses (as good or reasonable)
  • So the part of my brain that was rationalizing all this made me go, all nonchalantly, "Yeah, okay."   (source)
    rationalizing = excusing (as good or reasonable)
  • I signed on to an American payroll, rationalizing that I'd scatter dollars over the vendors in my little corner of la cité, at least, as it's certain no foreign relief will reach them any other way.   (source)
    rationalizing = thinking
  • The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery.   (source)
    rationalization = thinking of an excuse to justify actions
  • Then she'll be more able to rationalize the acts of her lymphatic glands.   (source)
    rationalize = think of a good excuse for
  • All of these rationalizations smote me as soon as I heard her voice.†   (source)
  • Then you'll bring in faith, and Ellerby will counter with biblical interpretation, which you will point out is nothing more than cheap rationalization in order to avoid being responsible to God.†   (source)
  • He had had all of these rationalizations, and now here I was, giving him hard data.†   (source)
  • She desired these things with a primitive impulse that her husband was happy to rationalize, and they were beautiful, useful objects as long as they remained in their original environment, in the show windows of Rome, Paris, London, or in the New York, vibrating to the Charleston, where skyscrapers were beginning to grow, but they could not withstand the test of Strauss waltzes with pork cracklings or Poetic Festivals when it was ninety degrees in the shade.†   (source)
  • Yes, that was definitely a case of rationalizing.†   (source)
  • He tried to rationalize what had just happened.†   (source)
  • But it seemed to them that the high councils in international health often used this analytic tool to rationalize an irrational status quo: mdr treatment was cost-effective in a place like New York, but not in a place like Peru.†   (source)
  • You're rationalizing everything, and it's freaking me out."†   (source)
  • I acquiesced, rationalizing that it would be for only a few days.†   (source)
  • The contrived turf war that a sixteen-year-old African American used to rationalize the shooting of an African refugee was a make-believe corollary of the more realistic competition over limited resources—housing, jobs, government aid—that fueled identity-based hostility in Clarkston among adults.†   (source)
  • At a certain point your brain stops trying to rationalize things.†   (source)
  • Let's hear no more lying rationalizations.†   (source)
  • And be able to do that job and rationalize it, religiously or country or however you deal with it, say, 'Okay, that was my job, that's why I did that.†   (source)
  • She tried to convince herself that Keith was lying, grasping for a way to rationalize his news.†   (source)
  • This wasn't some casual fling we could go at for a night and try to rationalize away the next day.†   (source)
  • I try to rationalize it.†   (source)
  • I'm almost embarrassed to say-I've told too many patients that they invent uncomfortable images to rationalize their panic, justify their fears.†   (source)
  • But now Mother was carefully rationalizing her actions, guarding every word, making her treatment of "It" seem like nothing more than a parent disciplining a disobedient child; brutalizing "It" had not only been justified, but necessary.†   (source)
  • He'd tried to rationalize it, in the hope of finding some more acceptable reason.†   (source)
  • He simply couldn't rationalize her following the glitz trail.†   (source)
  • If they wanted something, they simply took it and did away with clever rationalizations.†   (source)
  • They stress the advantages or rationalize the evils of monarchies by comparing them to the vice and defects of a republic.†   (source)
  • You're rationalizing.†   (source)
  • So I mean you can't just rationalize it away without even—"†   (source)
  • Perhaps I am only rationalizing, but I think her death was an act of mercy.†   (source)
  • Or was he merely trying to rationalize his dislike of skyscrapers, still unabated after twenty years in New York?†   (source)
  • Months later, watching this book remain first on the best-seller list for unbelievable week after week, I was able to rationalize my blindness by saying to myself that if McGraw-Hill had paid me more than ninety cents an hour I might have been more sensitive to the nexus between good books and filthy lucre.†   (source)
  • My mind must have added that touch to the phenomenon, to try to rationalize it at least a bit.†   (source)
  • I know why you work as you do, the rationalizations.†   (source)
  • It is all one, we have never pretended to be wholly just in the process of rationalizing society.†   (source)
  • His Federalist colleagues even attempted to rationalize such aggressive measures 42 ' John F. Kennedy by talking vaguely of Britain's difficulties in her war with France and our friendly tone toward the latter.†   (source)
  • Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.†   (source)
  • "It makes my job a lot easier, really," he rationalized.   (source)
    rationalized = excused (as good or reasonable)
  • But on another plane—a plane that defies rationalizing, a more fragile plane, one whose essence would fracture and splinter if I even vocalized it—I wasn't surprised that she was calling.   (source)
    rationalizing = excusing bad as good or reasonable
  • ADULTERY, WHAT ELSE CAN HE RATIONALIZE?   (source)
    rationalize = think of a good excuse for
  • And at another memorable moment, commenting on her son-in-law's affair with her daughter's 'greatest friend,' she rationalized: "If John is going to deceive Constance, it's nice it should be somebody we all know."   (source)
    rationalized = excused (as good or reasonable)
  • Another thing we can do is to rationalize.†   (source)
  • Animals don't rationalize; they go for the throats and plug up the holes.†   (source)
  • So you rationalize.†   (source)
  • Freud himself did not claim to have discovered phenomena such as repression, defense mechanisms, or rationalizing.†   (source)
  • That was the rationalization he needed, the conviction that whatever he had been was far less than his enemies wanted the world to believe, for they would not use him otherwise.†   (source)
  • There were ways to rationalize it.†   (source)
  • And before I know what I'm doing, before I can argue myself out of it, rationalize what a terrible idea this is, I'm walking toward the box office.†   (source)
  • The apostle of Carlos could accept the killing of the woman; it was a debt he could rationalize, but not the children, and certainly not the mutilations.†   (source)
  • Then I rationalize.†   (source)
  • Thus, perhaps without realizing it, some Senators tend to take the easier, less troublesome path to harmonize or rationalize what at first appears to be a conflict between their conscience—or the result of their deliberations—and the majority opinion of their constituents.†   (source)
  • He kept no special lookout, rationalizing that night feeders would be bedded down and day feeders would hardly be prowling the tree tops-not big ones, anyway; they would be on the ground, stalking herbivores.†   (source)
  • As frustrating as it was to listen to the mayor's excuse-making, I actually found myself developing a degree of sympathy for Swaney as he fumbled through his rationalizations.†   (source)
  • Indeed, her aversion to reading about Nuremberg had provided one of her rationalizations for not applying herself to American journalism and thus improving—or at least enlarging—an important compartment of her English.†   (source)
  • On January 24, 1878, in a courageous and learned address—his first major speech on the Senate floor—Lamar rejected the pleas of Mississippi voters and assailed elaborate rationalizations behind the two silver measures as artificial and exaggerated.†   (source)
  • She was missing Johnny so terribly and thinking so, to rationalize his not being there.†   (source)
  • In the Eskimo story of Raven in the belly of the whale, the motif of the fire sticks has suffered a dislocation and subsequent rationalization.†   (source)
  • In the later stages of many mythologies, the key images hide like needles in great haystacks of secondary anecdote and rationalization; for when a civilization has passed from a mythological to a secular point of view, the older images are no longer felt or quite approved.†   (source)
  • He was born from his father's left side, the father having swallowed by mistake a fertility potion that the Brahmins had prepared for his wife;* and in keeping with the promising symbolism of this miracle, the motherless marvel, fruit of the male womb, grew to be such a king among kings that when the gods, at one period, were suffering defeat in their perpetual contest with the demons, they This detail is a rationalization of rebirth from the hermaphroditii.†   (source)
  • The magic objects tossed behind by the panic-ridden hero—protective interpretations, principles, symbols, rationalizations, anything —delay and absorb the power of the started Hound of Heaven, permitting the adventurer to come back into his fold safe and with perhaps a boon.†   (source)
  • The Freudians declare that each of us is slaying his father, marrying his mother, all the time—only unconsciously: the roundabout symbolic ways of doing this and the rationalizations of the consequent compulsive activity constitute our individual lives and common civilization.†   (source)
  • Rationalising?†   (source)
    unconventional spelling: This is the British spelling. Americans spell it rationalizing.
  • Rationalize why this isn't the tape you're making a return appearance on.   (source)
    rationalize = make excuses
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  • She went: "You're overrationalizing."   (source)
    overrationalizing = overthinking
  • Perhaps each hundred years or so men like them, like me, appeared in society, drifting through; and yet by all historical logic we, I, should have disappeared around the first part of the nineteenth century, rationalized out of existence.   (source)
    rationalized = removed through reasoning
  • Whenever you overrationalize, Mia, I know you're worried.   (source)
    overrationalize = overthink
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show 10 more examples with any meaning
  • She rationalized that she deserved the money—for mowing the lawn, washing the dishes, being yelled at for no good reason.†   (source)
  • A: Then I rationalized.†   (source)
  • I rationalized the omission: There was no point getting all worked up about a kiss.†   (source)
  • Anyway, he rationalized such a conversation would only bring more pain with no resolution.†   (source)
  • I rationalized that there was no harm in keeping Nora company.†   (source)
  • I knew how he rationalized his drinking: His father was an alcoholic, and people had been telling him his whole life that he was going to be one, too.†   (source)
  • Cedric has finally rationalized that: his chances of being accepted there for the upcoming summer are slim-about as slim as his chances of ultimately ending anywhere other than some no-name college.†   (source)
  • Though likely she had rationalized it to herself some other way.†   (source)
  • He rationalized that it was no more an unethical decision on his part than those made every year by scores of Pentagon personnel who walked out of Arlington and into the corporate arms of their old friends the defense contractors.†   (source)
  • And now Annie realized that in her deliberation she'd resorted to that old self-shielding habit of hers and rationalized it: of course children were upset by these things, she'd told herself, it was inevitable; but if it was done in a civilized, sensitive way there need be no lasting trauma; neither parent was lost, only some obsolete geography.†   (source)
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  • It wouldn't hurt, he rationalized, to cool off a bit before he drove into town.†   (source)
  • The whiteness of a man's skin or the misguided customs of his land do not exonerate him from hideous deeds, no matter how they have been rationalized and legislated into feigned legitimacy.†   (source)
  • "Too fine a day," he had rationalized, an excuse that never seemed to grow stale for him.†   (source)
  • Don't know how he rationalized relationship; I hesitated to ask.†   (source)
  • That's how I rationalized it for so long.†   (source)
  • Even though his heart skipped a beat, he rationalized that in the confusion someone had seen to her, probably Sarah Madison or Vicki Ducette, or one of the older kids.†   (source)
  • I found something to say about modest mountains of Chad when we were entertained there and rationalized so well I almost believed it.†   (source)
  • North Americans are sentimental about their "United States" even though it ceased to mean anything once their continent had been rationalized by F.N. They elect a president every eight years, why, could not say—why do British still have Queen?†   (source)
  • They did have a theory of morals and they tried to live by it (I should not have sneered at their motives) but their theory was wrong — half of it fuzzy-headed wishful thinking, half of it rationalized charlatanry.†   (source)
  • "But then," he rationalized, "if I did that, all the other would expect to get 'em handed to 'em.†   (source)
  • This is our problem as modern, "enlightened" individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence.†   (source)
  • Kitsch, by virtue of a rationalized technique that draws on science and industry, has erased this distinction in practice.†   (source)
  • During the later Middle Ages, he once arose from the dead to participate in a crusadesEach of these biographies exhibits the variously rationalized theme of the infant exile and return.†   (source)
  • The boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another hero to refresh the word.†   (source)
  • Uncomprehended inherited themes, such as that of the Minotaur—the dark and terrible night aspect of an old Egypto-Cretan representation of the incarnate sun god and divine king—were rationalized and reinterpreted to suit contemporary ends.†   (source)
  • The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding.†   (source)
  • The mystagogue (father or father-substitute) is to entrust the symbols of office only to a son who has been effectually purged of all inappropriate infantile cathexes—for whom the just, impersonal exercise of the powers will not be rendered impossible by unconscious (or perhaps even conscious and rationalized) motives of self-aggrandizement, personal preference, or resentment.†   (source)
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