banalize

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beachboy

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Are there more commonly used synonyms for the verb "banalize"? For example, when referring to crime...
 
beachboy said:
Are there more commonly used synonyms for the verb "banalize"? For example, when referring to crime...
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Where did you find "banalize"? It's not a word I have ever heard or seen and it doesn't appear in any of the dictionaries I have checked.
 
Merriam-Webster has it.
Crime is committed in such an easy way nowadays that it's becoming a banal thing. Crime is being "banalized".
 
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beachboy said:
Merriam-Webster has it.
Crime is commited in such an easy way nowadays that it's becoming a banal thing. Crime is being "banalized".
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I think such a word should exist in English. (It exists in French and German.) An educated person will understand it.
 
I can't think of one word that would mean that. I understand that you're looking for an intransitive verb. ("Crime is X-ing" instead of "crime is being Y-ed"). Is that right? I'd say, "Crime is losing its power to shock," or, "Crime is becoming/growing/getting banal/common/commonplace."

I hope someone provides better ideas. It's irritating that words in one language don't have exact counterparts in other languages. Someone should fix it!
 
Actually, I was looking for a transitive verb, as "people are X-ing crime", because that a way to say it in Portuguese. On the other hand, we know that we can't purely translate sentences. So I was trying to find out how natives would convey this idea more naturally... Maybe they would say it in a totally different way... But your ideas work perfectly.
 
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Jasmin165 said:
I think such a word should exist in English. (It exists in French and German.) An educated person will understand it.
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... and does, but in that MW citation, the quotation marks indicate that it's a newly-coined word.

There's although the word 'vulgarized', which has unfortunately been tainted by a limited understanding of the term 'vulgar'. Luckily, this misunderstanding doesn't extend to Portuguese! ;-)

There is also an idiom that is applied to culture rather than to crime, meaning 'made to appeal to a wider/simpler level' - dumbed down.

b
 
Does trivialised hit the spot for you?

Rover
 
It certainly does!
 
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