EPITOMIZE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does epitomize mean? 

• EPITOMIZE (verb)
  The verb EPITOMIZE has 1 sense:

1. embody the essential characteristics of or be a typical example of

  Familiarity information: EPITOMIZE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EPITOMIZE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they epitomize    ... he / she / it epitomizes   
Past simple: epitomized   
Past participle: epitomized   
-ing form: epitomizing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Embody the essential characteristics of or be a typical example of

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Synonyms:

epitomise; epitomize; typify

Context example:

The fugue typifies Bach's style of composition

Hypernyms (to "epitomize" is one way to...):

represent; stand for; symbolise; symbolize; typify (express indirectly by an image, form, or model; be a symbol)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Derivation:

epitome (a standard or typical example)

epitome (a brief abstract (as of an article or book))

 Context examples 

The cabin epitomized the new world in which they must thenceforth live and move. The old cabin was gone forever.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

She did not dream that in such guise new-born love would epitomize itself.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

His thin lips, like the dies of a machine, stamped out phrases that cut and stung; or again, pursing caressingly about the inchoate sound they articulated, the thin lips shaped soft and velvety things, mellow phrases of glow and glory, of haunting beauty, reverberant of the mystery and inscrutableness of life; and yet again the thin lips were like a bugle, from which rang the crash and tumult of cosmic strife, phrases that sounded clear as silver, that were luminous as starry spaces, that epitomized the final word of science and yet said something more—the poet's word, the transcendental truth, elusive and without words which could express, and which none the less found expression in the subtle and all but ungraspable connotations of common words.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)