Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
generalise \generalise\ v. same as generalize.
generalize \gen"er*al*ize\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Generalized; p. pr. & vb. n. Generalizing.] [Cf. F. g['e]n['e]raliser.]
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To bring under a genus or under genera; to view in relation to a genus or to genera.
Copernicus generalized the celestial motions by merely referring them to the moon's motion. Newton generalized them still more by referring this last to the motion of a stone through the air.
--W. Nicholson. -
To apply to other genera or classes; to use with a more extensive application; to extend so as to include all special cases; to make universal in application, as a formula or rule.
When a fact is generalized, our discontent is quited, and we consider the generality itself as tantamount to an explanation.
--Sir W. Hamilton. -
To derive or deduce (a general conception, or a general principle) from particulars. [WordNet sense 2]
Syn: generalize, extrapolate, infer.
A mere conclusion generalized from a great multitude of facts.
--Coleridge. -
To speak in generalities; to talk in abstract terms.
Syn: generalise, speak generally.
Wiktionary
vb. (standard spelling of from=Non-Oxford British spelling lang=en generalize)
WordNet
v. speak or write in generalities [syn: generalize] [ant: specify]
draw from specific cases for more general cases [syn: generalize, extrapolate, infer]
cater to popular taste to make popular and present to the general public; bring into general or common use; "They popularized coffee in Washington State"; "Relativity Theory was vulgarized by these authors" [syn: popularize, popularise, vulgarize, vulgarise, generalize]
become systemic and spread throughout the body; "this kind of infection generalizes throughout the immune system" [syn: generalize]
Usage examples of "generalise".
The first, which ended with the appearance, in convict prison, of generalised epileptic fits, was that of creative interrogation faced with the fact of illness.
However the precise description of the generalised fits makes one wonder.
I found series after series of manuscripts roughly thrown together, after some pretence at arrangement, and lettered with a very generalised description of contents.
Its generalised aim became the overthrow of the Cuno government which epitomised all that was rotten.
That is the first, most generalised difference between a Utopia based upon modern conceptions and all the Utopias that were written in the former time.
The facts were ignored that trade is a bye-product and not an essential factor in social life, that property is a plastic and fluctuating convention, that value is capable of impersonal treatment only in the case of the most generalised requirements.
Are we but mocking at Utopias, you demand, using all these noble and generalised hopes as the backcloth against which two bickering personalities jar and squabble?
For altho he writes particularly of the Southern Indians only, the Catawbas, Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws, with whom alone he was personally acquainted, yet he generalises whatever he found among them, and brings himself to believe that the hundred languages of America, differing fundamentally every one from every other, as much as Greek from Gothic, have yet all one common prototype.
We do not waste our intellects in generalising, but take man or bird as we find him.
But particularising from the general could be every bit as dangerous and misleading as generalising from the particular: of Mrs Dansby-Gregg, as a person, I knew nothing.
But to what ultimate generalising purpose all these have written, the above cited extracts will show.
At least two conflicting generalised measures can be applied to T, the space of all topological spaces with countable basis.