Definitions

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

  • transitive verb To make external.
  • transitive verb To manifest externally.
  • transitive verb To attribute to outside causes.
  • transitive verb To project or attribute (inner conflicts or feelings) to external circumstances or causes.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To embody in an outward form; give shape and form to.
  • To confer the quality of externality or external reality upon; invest with actual objectivity: a word used in modern psychology to indicate a mental operation whereby, for instance, one's name arising in the mind as a subjective concept is heard as a word spoken from without, and therefore as a sense-percept.
  • Also spelled externalise.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To make external; to manifest by outward form.

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

  • verb To make something external or objective
  • verb To represent something abstract or intangible as material; to embody
  • verb psychology To attribute emotions etc to external circumstances; to project
  • verb economics To direct to others, as costs or benefits.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb make external or objective, or give reality to
  • verb regard as objective

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • They're also unwittingly suffering from our economic system's lack of full-cost accounting, which has made it perfectly acceptable for companies to "externalize" their negative social and environmental impacts and shift the burdens of these impacts, financial and otherwise, to society at large.

    Jeffrey Hollender: Five Things Business Leaders Must Do in 2011 Jeffrey Hollender 2011

  • My reasoning, if it could be called such, is that this way I kind of externalize the PTSD… sort of, like, um, interact with it in some conscious way… sort of turn it into something I can imagine managing.

    Why I’m Currently Blogging Life is Like a Bad RPG | Spontaneous ∂erivation 2010

  • It also pushes businesses to cut worker safety protections, cut product quality, cut customer service, "externalize" costs by polluting, etc.

    Dave Johnson: Businesses Do Not Create Jobs Dave Johnson 2010

  • I would think that it was in the millions or billions of dollars - costs that the companies simply "externalize" onto the environment, and thus onto everybody else, while keeping all the "profits" - "profits" in quotes because the money made is actually stolen from everybody else.

    EPA Lets Miners Dump In Waterways Dave Hurteau 2008

  • It also pushes businesses to cut worker safety protections, cut product quality, cut customer service, "externalize" costs by polluting, etc.

    Dave Johnson: Businesses Do Not Create Jobs Dave Johnson 2010

  • It also pushes businesses to cut worker safety protections, cut product quality, cut customer service, "externalize" costs by polluting, etc.

    Dave Johnson: Businesses Do Not Create Jobs Dave Johnson 2010

  • Those who target the workplace fit a general profile: they are primarily white males who have few social supports, tend to "externalize" or blame others for their problems and are preoccupied with weapons.

    Waging War In The Workplace 2008

  • Sparkling moments: To "externalize" a problem is not necessarily to solve it.

    Rewriting Life Stories 2008

  • I "externalize" my memory of such technological glitches and fixes.

    The reality of knowledge work Clark Aldrich 2005

  • While GDP continues to "externalize" all those social and environmental costs, it keeps blinding politicians and government officials to all their risks to society: from global warming, epidemics and resource depletion to poverty gaps, and social exclusion.

    unknown title 2009

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