gracilize

present singular third person gracilizes · participle present gracilizing · participle past gracilized · past gracilized

1. anthropologyTo exhibit a reduction in bone mass due to the process of evolution.

   No exact racial diagnostics can be made on the basis of the preserved cranial parts, but still it is obvious that it refers to the Mediterranide race that began to gracilize.

   1986, Anthropologie, volumes 24-25, page 171

   1 more example

   The apparent absence of any apparent sexual or age-based divisions of labour contrasts strikingly with anatomically modern humans of the Pleistocene in which females appear to gracilize relatively quickly, implying perhaps a sex-based division of labour (Soffer 1994).

   2001 June 29, PB Pettitt, “Neanderthal lifecycles: Developmental and social phases in the lives of the last archaics”, in World archaeology, volume 31, number 3