Meaning of Birminghamize | Babel Free

Definitions

To make ersatz

dated, transitive

Examples

“1856, Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits, ch. Ⅴ – "Ability". “The manners and customs of society are artificial;—made-up men with made-up manners;—and thus the whole is Birminghamized, and we have⟳ a nation whose existence is a work⟳ of art;—a cold, barren, almost arctic isle being made the most fruitful, luxurious and imperial land⟳ in the whole earth.””

“He has a relish for unfamiliar words, words of recent coinage or of his own⟳ make⟳, or that closely similar type⟳ of words to which age has brought a second childhood... After this “Birminhamize” will be a mere peccadillo...”

““Full Home Rule⟳, first through a powerful system of local government (Chamberlain’s proposal to "Birminghamize" Ireland), later through a wider, national self-government, inexorably became the only Liberal solution.””

“The colloquial form⟳ of the city’s name⟳ thus entered the language as a contemptuous epithet. In 1861 the word was used to describe⟳ “The vulgar dandy, strutting along, with his Brummajem jewellry”; to “Birminhamize” was “to artificialize.””

“The horticultural site where some ladies naturalize is here revealed as a site where, simultaneously, others birminghamize—a nineteenth-century synonym, the OED states, for "artificialize."”

“In the 19th Century, the word Birmingham was used to mean⟳ artificial (the associated verb was birminghamize).”

“Indeed, the comparison of Manchesterize and Birminghamize showed that, from a semantic point⟳ of view⟳, there are no differences in the relationship between the verb and the PN etymon even though the former is listed as deriving from a common noun, itself originating from a PN.”

CEFR level