To treat or portray someone or something as heroic; to elevate to the status of a hero.
From hero plus -ize, the suffix turning nouns into verbs meaning 'to make or treat as' or 'to act in the manner of.'
Heroize is both celebration and criticism—we heroize the brave, but historians also point out how we wrongly heroize people who just benefited from being in the right place at the right time.
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