as in to explain
to give the reason for or cause of
rationalized his decision to buy the new car by noting that it was more fuel efficient than his old vehicle
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Recent Examples of rationalize
Vogue’s Favorite Diamond Necklaces Featured in this article Need another reason to rationalize your buy?
—
Samantha Solomon, Vogue, 15 Sep. 2025
With this setup, and with two stars who have done well playing characters on their respective Houses with a great capacity for rationalizing their cruelty to others, The Girlfriend could easily get away with going back and forth on the blame game for most of its six-hour length.
—Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 8 Sep. 2025
This guy needs to do some serious soul searching to rationalize his life existence.
—Lexy Perez, HollywoodReporter, 31 Aug. 2025
Keeping four running backs on this year’s active roster would be difficult to rationalize, even with Blackshear’s special teams acumen.
—Mike Kaye, Charlotte Observer, 26 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for rationalize
Samantha Solomon, Vogue, 15 Sep. 2025
With this setup, and with two stars who have done well playing characters on their respective Houses with a great capacity for rationalizing their cruelty to others, The Girlfriend could easily get away with going back and forth on the blame game for most of its six-hour length.
—Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 8 Sep. 2025
This guy needs to do some serious soul searching to rationalize his life existence.
—Lexy Perez, HollywoodReporter, 31 Aug. 2025
Keeping four running backs on this year’s active roster would be difficult to rationalize, even with Blackshear’s special teams acumen.
—Mike Kaye, Charlotte Observer, 26 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for rationalize
Recent Examples of Synonyms for rationalize
Verb
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Erika Kirk also explained why a small stuffed puppet was sitting beside Kirk’s empty microphone.—
Stephanie Murray,
AZCentral.com,
27 Sep. 2025
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Instead, Pittsburgh’s defense rested on the idea that the taxes equal out when considering the school-district tax—a point, as explained above, that failed to persuade the judges who have presided over this litigation.—
Robert Raiola,
Sportico.com,
27 Sep. 2025
Verb
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On September 24, Judge Smith permanently enjoined DHS from enforcing broad new immigration compliance conditions on a wide range of preparedness grants, ruling the agency had exceeded its statutory authority and failed to justify departing from longstanding grant practices.—
Robert Alexander,
MSNBC Newsweek,
1 Oct. 2025
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Among customers and in financial markets, skepticism is rising as some question whether the massive investment in AI will ever be justified by revenues.—
Sharon Goldman,
Fortune,
1 Oct. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Rationalize.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/rationalize. Accessed 2 Oct. 2025.
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