muscularize

English

Alternative forms

• muscularise

Etymology

muscular +‎ -ize

Verb

muscularize (third-person singular simple present muscularizes, present participle muscularizing, simple past and past participle muscularized)

1. To increase the size of the muscles.
   • 1982, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure

     I need to lift weights & muscularize my chest—it's still so sunken in.

   • 1993, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder,, page 159:

     Advanced freehand exercises shape and muscularize the body in a unique way; all the world's best-built men include them in their workouts.

2. (transitive) To make (something) more masculine, virile, or militaristic.
   • 2002, L. Dean Allen, Rise Up, O Men of God: the Men and Religion Forward Movement and Promise Keepers, page 73:

     Perhaps the most famous example of this impulse to muscularize Christianity in the early twentieth century was evangelist Billy Sunday.