parrotize

present singular third person parrotizes · participle present parrotizing · participle past parrotized · past parrotized

1. To parrot; to repeat what one has been told.

   Gray Gravity it selfe can well beteam, That Language be adapted to the Theme. He that to Parrots speaks, must parrotize: He that instructs a foole, may act th' unwise.

   1843, Nathaniel Ward, The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America

   4 more examples

   How often is the nonsense and error of the common translation, the rudeness and dulness of the metre of some Psalms, as Psal. vii. 13, as also the cold formality with which that ordinance is performed by many who do but parrotize?

   1820, John Flavel, The whole works of John Flavel

   Children learn to parrotize on the subject; and young people imagine that the superstructure of their religion is complete, when even the first stone of the building is not firmly laid.

   1838, Female efforts in the Saviour's Cause defended and encouraged.

   Thinking and speaking thus demand an unduly prolonged effort and, subconsciously, he would rather fall back on his old habit and parrotize than do any thinking at all, much less think originally.

   1950, Clifford Holmes Prator, Language Teaching in the Philippines: A Report, page 17

   Although you "know" you know this subject, you may at times be guilty of talking some of the same parrotized nonsense (of either the right or the left) of which you sometimes accuse your friends.

   1957, William Frank Buckley, National Review - Volume 3, page 555

2. transitiveTo cause to behave like a parrot.

   To deal, then, in verbal abstractions, and to attempt the communication of ideas to children who have yet to become acquainted with their prototypes in nature, is, indeed, (in the language of our author) to parrotize them.

   1842, The Athenaeum, page 187