Humanize

Posted by TheFallen on May 14, 2003

In Reply to: Humanized radio posted by Celia on May 14, 2003

: Hi,

: Could anyone help me with the following bracketed sentence. I am not quite sure what it means.

:
: (President Franklin Delano Roosevelt humanized radio in a great government, national sense as it had never before been humanized). The use of radio by politicians was not a new development.

: Thank you very much.

: Celia

That's a particularly hideous piece of writing and I'm not sure what it means either. To "humanize" something usually means either to imbue it with human characteristics, or to make it more humane, or civilised. I don't think that either sense fits the sentence that you quote.

I think that the writer's trying to say that when President FDR gave radio broadcasts, they were done in such a manner to be more accessible to the general public, rather than just to politicians or the intelligentsia - ordinary people could relate to whatever he was saying. However, I am not at all sure.

Opinions, anyone else?

• Humanize Bob 05/14/03