attitudinize

verb attitudinizes · attitudinizing · attitudinized · attitudinise

1. British, English, Oxford, US, transitive To cause (someone or something) to assume an attitude or pose; to pose, to posture. In Greenwich, there were many gravelled walks, unshrubbed except for the nurses who dotted them, silent and attitudinized as trees.
2. British, English, Oxford, US, transitive To give the appearance of, or make a show of, (something) by assuming an affected or exaggerated attitude. While she, one hand on his arm, had been attitudinizing her dutiful gratitude, he—as she suddenly realized—had been deciding to rid her of Fordham [her estate manager]. No sentimentalizing, no attitudinizing there!
3. British, English, Oxford, US, intransitive To assume an attitude or pose, especially one which is affected, exaggerated, or unnatural; to posture, to posturize; also, to excessively practise adopting attitudes or poses. He had a great averſion to geſticulating in company. He called once to a gentleman vvho offended him in that point, "Don't attitudeniſe."
4. British, English, Oxford, US, figuratively, intransitive To create art, speak, or write in a manner which assumes affected, exaggerated, or unnatural attitudes. [W]hoso rhymes a sonnet pays a tax, / Who paints a landscape dips brush at his cost, / Who scores a septett true for strings and wind / Mulcted must be—else how should I impose / Properly, attitudinize aright, / Did such conflicting claims as these divert / Hohenstiel-Schwangau from observing me?