Timonize
verbEtymology From Timon + -ize, after the 5th-century-BCE person Timon of Athens (as described by Plutarch, Lucian, and Aristophanes), possibly by way of William Shakespeare's play Timon of Athens (c. 1607). Used intransitively by William Darrell in his book The Gentleman Instructed (1713), and transitively by Herman Melville in his novel Pierre (1852).
1
To behave as a misanthrope.
- I should be tempted to Timonize, and clap a Satyr upon our whole Species.1713, William Darrell, The Gentleman Instructed, 5th edition
2
To cause (someone) to slide into bitter misanthropy, into Timonism.
- And it may well be believed, that after the wonderful vital world-revelation so suddenly made to Pierre at the Meadows—a revelation which, at moments, in some certain things, fairly Timonized him—he had not failed to clutch with peculiar nervous detestation and contempt that ample parcel, containing the letters of his Biographico and other silly correspondents, which, in a less ferocious hour, he had filed away as curiosities.1852, Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, Harper & Brothers, page 348:
- Lawrence's progressive alienation from his countrymen and finally from humanity – as it were, the "Timonizing" process that overcame him – went hand in hand with his estrangement from Russell.1983, Michael L. Ross, "Lawrence's letters", in Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, volume 3, number 1 (Summer 1983), page 58
- Derived terms
- Timonization, Timonizing