gracilize

English

Etymology

gracile +‎ -ize.

Verb

gracilize (third-person singular simple present gracilizes, present participle gracilizing, simple past and past participle gracilized)

1. (anthropology) To exhibit a reduction in bone mass due to the process of evolution.
   • 2001 June 29, PB Pettitt, “Neanderthal lifecycles: Developmental and social phases in the lives of the last archaics”, in World archaeology, volume 31, number 3:

     The apparent absence of any apparent sexual or age-based divisions of labour contrasts strikingly with anatomically modern humans of the Pleistocene in which females appear to gracilize relatively quickly, implying perhaps a sex-based division of labour (Soffer 1994).

   • 1986, Anthropologie, volumes 24-25, page 171:

     No exact racial diagnostics can be made on the basis of the preserved cranial parts, but still it is obvious that it refers to the Mediterranide race that began to gracilize.