Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Externalize \Ex*ter"nal*ize\, v. t. To make external; to manifest by outward form.
Thought externalizes itself in language.
--Soyce.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1846, from external + -ize. Related: Externalized; externalizing.\n\nSelf-government begins with a reverential recognition of a supreme law: its process is a constant endeavor to render that law objective, real, operative
--to externalize it, if we may use the term.
["American Review," July, 1846]
Wiktionary
vb. 1 To make something external or objective 2 To represent something abstract or intangible as material; to embody 3 (context psychology English) To attribute emotions etc to external circumstances; to project 4 (context economics English) To direct to others, as costs or benefits.
WordNet
v. regard as objective [syn: project, externalise]
make external or objective, or give reality to; "language externalizes our thoughts" [syn: exteriorize, exteriorise, externalise, objectify]
Usage examples of "externalize".
He left behind the young masseuse, endlessly climbing the service shafts and freight wells of the high-rise, transits that externalized an odyssey taking place inside her head.
In this house, on this night, the bleak landscape of the sociopathic mind had been externalized.
Such was JEVEX's method for externalizing its dimensions of existencea solution which Eubeleus had no hesitation in acclaiming as a feat of genius.
Their obsessive activity is simply a way of hiding the truth from themselvesby turning their delusory system upside down and externalizing it.
Thus, beliefs such as 'white skins are better than black skins', 'right-handedness is better than left-handedness', and 'cops are bad' are externalized in transactions on the basis of prejudgement, before reality data (Adult) is applied to them.
It was a question very different in quality from the frank and self-forgetful externalized curiosity with which Thales and Heraclitus were attacking the problems of the universe, or the equally self-forgetful burthen of moral obligation that the culminating prophets were imposing upon the Hebrew mind.
According to the books, old mamasan in her green pants and orange top was 'an externalized fantasy' which served as a 'coping mechanism' to help him deal with his 'survivor guilt' and 'post-traumatic stress syndrome.