strangify

English

Etymology

From strange +‎ -ify.

Verb

strangify (third-person singular simple present strangifies, present participle strangifying, simple past and past participle strangified)

1. (transitive) To make strange or exotic.
   • 2002, Paul Giles, Virtual Americas, page 313:

     In 1970, Nabokov specifically took issue with an attempt critically to explicate his work within this Russian formalist matrix, arguing: "What doesn't make strange, estrange, strangify in a book , if the author is a genuine artist? No, leave those terms alone. Avoid textbook truth"

   • 2012, James L. Kugel, The Great Poems of the Bible, page 16:

     How can a translator adopt a single style for such diverse material? One thing I have definitely avoided in my translation is the attempt to “strangify” the English, to forgo the straightforward in favor of something—anything—that sounds unusual.

   • 2013, Maria Olson, “Citizenship Education without Citizenship? The Migrant in EU Education Policy on European Citizenship—Toward the Margin through 'Strangification'”, in Reinhold Hedtke, Tatiana Zimenkova, editor, Education for Civic and Political Participation, page 166:

     Moreover, the very process through which this symbolic pushing of the Migrant toward the margin takes place through policy can be further specified as a matter of ongoing rhetorical acts that 'strangify' the skills, dispositions, preferences, lifestyles and citizen enactments that are actualised by concrete others that are encompassed by the figure of the Migrant.

   • 2015, Beverley Southgate, A New Type of History:

     And, with history itself now re-defined as an 'artwork', its potential in a similar direction —its potential, that is, for deliberate disruption of conventional ways of thinking, or to 'strangify', as theorist Sande Cohen urges – becomes clear.

   • 2016, Phil Cousineau, The Oldest Story In the World, page 4:

     Stories strangify experiences and estrange the world so we can rise above it like smoke, if even for a moment, to catch a glimpse not only of what is happening — but what it all might mean.

   • 2018, Peter Mclaren, Revolutionary Multiculturalism:

     To strangify is to engage in a non reduction of meaning that terrorizes all forms of equational logic, positive and negative.

2. (transitive) To extend so as to be accessible to others; to universalize.
   • 2007, Zhao Dunhua, Dialogues of Philosophies, Religions and Civilizations in the Era of Globalization, page 201:

     If I want to make myself understandable to you, I need to strangify my discourse into your language. If I want to make my ideals universally 'practiceable', I cannot force you to practice it in my social context; I need to strangify my ideals into your social context.

   • 2008, William Sweet, The Dialogue of Cultural Traditions: A Global Perspective, page 287:

     Through appropriating a language understandable to others, we shall be able to strangify ourselves via that kind of language .

   • 2018, Ming Dong Gu, Why Traditional Chinese Philosophy Still Matters:

     Unwillingness to appropriate other language and to strangify would mean self-contentment with, or self-enclosure in, one's own micro-world, cultural world, or religious world.

Related terms

• strangification

Translations

Translations

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 外推 (zh) (wàituī)

• German: ^{(please verify)} Verfremdung (de)