baptize
/bapˈtʌɪz
/(also baptise)
verb [with object and often with complement]
1Administer baptism to (someone); christen: he was baptized Joshua...
- As a youngster, I was baptized but had no Christian upbringing.
- The different Christian sects baptize children according to their own religious traditions.
- If they are Christian, they baptize their children.
Synonyms
christen, immerse, sprinkle
rare lustrate
1.1Admit (someone) into a specified Church by baptism: Mark had been baptized a Catholic...
- It also has social consequences, for example when Victoria describes her knee-jerk reaction not to let her son be baptized into the Catholic church.
- She was baptized into the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite, which faith she embraced to the end.
- As a young man he was baptized into the Evangelical Mennonite Church, at that time known as the Kleine-gemeinde.
Synonyms
admit, introduce, initiate, enrol, recruit, convert
1.2Give a name or nickname to: the media have baptized the murderer ‘The Babysitter’...
- Bakalova's little known nickname, baptised by friends and relatives for luck, is ‘the golden fish’.
- City of York Ladies Hockey Club failed to baptise their new name with a win in the season's opening North League game as they disappointingly slipped 5-1 at home to Leyland.
- Now it is time for you to be baptized in the name of the Parent, as her servant and warrior in this realm.
Synonyms
name, give a name to, call, dub, nickname;
label, style, term, describe as, title, entitle, designate
rare clepe, denominate
Origin
Middle English: via Old French from ecclesiastical Latin baptizare, from Greek baptizein 'immerse, baptize'.