Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To establish and maintain the price of (a commodity) by governmental action.
  • transitive verb To give or assign a value to, especially a higher value.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To give something a value
  • verb To fix the price of something artificially

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Portuguese valorizar, from valor, value, from Late Latin; see valor.]

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Examples

  • Aperture/The Paul Strand Archive "Cristo with Thorns, Huexotla, 1933" Mr. Strand was reading Marx at this time, and considered his work "a criticism of capitalism a system I detest," so all the portraits are of peasants and tend to valorize them.

    Capturing Three Worlds Apart William Meyers 2010

  • Pragmatically speaking, it seems we ought to valorize achievements like writing Anna Karenina or work that leads to a Nobel Prize, even if Tolstoy or [Nobel-winning scientist] would have had a personally happier — and more fulfilling, even — life focusing on their family.

    Matthew Yglesias » Eternal Recurrence 2010

  • If you valorize someone who does those things, you are simply evil.

    UnCommonwealth 2010

  • It just might help valorize, or rather revalorize, the reputation of capitalism, which has taken a beating the past few years and not recovered.

    South Carolina Will Likely Choose Romney Peggy Noonan 2012

  • If you valorize someone who does those things, you are simply evil.

    Early nineties, maybe? 2010

  • I have to assume that in Ulin's reference to "playing games" he is taking a swipe at postmodernism, using the same stale cliche those critics who want to valorize the "engagement" of writers like Mailer and Johnson in contrast to the aesthetic affectations of formalists and metafictionists always seem to use.

    Saying Something 2010

  • Legal defenses of fandom find themselves tempted to valorize the individual genius of the fan author.

    Archive 2009-04-01 Rebecca Tushnet 2009

  • Perhaps it is too much to ask that the editors of these pages more often consider art over commerce, the interests of literature over the interests of the status quo, but must they so consistently valorize the mediocre?

    Book Reviewing 2010

  • Some valorize community over the form of the work produced.

    Archive 2009-04-01 Rebecca Tushnet 2009

  • If you valorize someone who does those things, you are simply evil.

    February 2010 2010

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