1. to think of or represent someone or something as perfect or better than they really are

Examples

• She tends to idealize her childhood memories.
• Many people idealize celebrities without knowing their flaws.
• The movie idealizes small-town life in the 1950s.
• He idealized his father and couldn’t see his mistakes.
• Don’t idealize the past – it had problems too.
• The artist idealized the human form in his sculptures.