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Appear vs Realize - What's the difference?

appear | realize |

As verbs the difference between appear and realize

is that appear is to come or be in sight; to be in view; to become visible while realize is to make real; to convert from the imaginary or fictitious into the actual; to bring into concrete existence; to accomplish.

appear

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • (label) To come or be in sight; to be in view; to become visible.
  • * 1611 , (w) 1:9:
  • And Godthe dry land appear .
  • * {{quote-magazine, year=2012, month=March-April
  • , author=(Jeremy Bernstein), volume=100, issue=2, page=146, magazine=(American Scientist) , title= A Palette of Particles , passage=There were also particles no one had predicted that just appeared . Five of them […, i]n order of increasing modernity, […] are the neutrino, the pi meson, the antiproton, the quark and the Higgs boson.}}
  • (label) To come before the public.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1905, author=
  • , title= , chapter=2 citation , passage=Miss Phyllis Morgan, as the hapless heroine dressed in the shabbiest of clothes, appears in the midst of a gay and giddy throng; she apostrophises all and sundry there, including the villain, and has a magnificent scene which always brings down the house, and nightly adds to her histrionic laurels.}}
  • (label) To stand in presence of some authority, tribunal, or superior person, to answer a charge, plead a cause, or the like; to present one's self as a party or advocate before a court, or as a person to be tried.
  • * 1611 , 5:10:
  • We must all appear before the judgment seat.
  • * (rfdate) (Thomas Babington Macaulay):
  • One ruffian escaped because no prosecutor dared to appear .
  • (label) To become visible to the apprehension of the mind; to be known as a subject of observation or comprehension, or as a thing proved; to be obvious or manifest.
  • * 1611 , 3:2:
  • It doth not yet appear what we shall be.
  • * (rfdate) (John Milton):
  • Of their vain contest appeared no end.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
  • , chapter=18 citation , passage=‘Then the father has a great fight with his terrible conscience,’ said Munday with granite seriousness. ‘Should he make a row with the police […]?  Or should he say nothing about it and condone brutality for fear of appearing in the newspapers?}}
  • * {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, magazine=(American Scientist)
  • , author= Philip J. Bushnell , title= Solvents, Ethanol, Car Crashes & Tolerance , passage=Surprisingly, this analysis revealed that acute exposure to solvent vapors at concentrations below those associated with long-term effects appears to increase the risk of a fatal automobile accident. Furthermore, this increase in risk is comparable to the risk of death from leukemia after long-term exposure to benzene,
  • To seem; to have a certain semblance; to look.
  • * 1611 , (w) 6:16:
  • They disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
  • , chapter=5 citation , passage=Mr. Campion appeared suitably impressed and she warmed to him. He was very easy to talk to with those long clown lines in his pale face, a natural goon, born rather too early she suspected.}}

    Usage notes

    * Senses 4, 5. This is a catenative verb that takes the to infinitive . See

    Synonyms

    * (seem) look

    Antonyms

    * (to become visible) disappear, vanish

    realize

    English

    Alternative forms

    * realise (non-Oxford British spelling)

    Verb

    (realiz)
  • To make real; to convert from the imaginary or fictitious into the actual; to bring into concrete existence; to accomplish.
  • * (rfdate) (w)
  • We realize what Archimedes had only in hypothesis, weighting a single grain against the globe of earth.
  • To become aware of a fact or situation.
  • *
  • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or
  • To cause to seem real; to impress upon the mind as actual; to feel vividly or strongly; to make one's own in apprehension or experience.
  • * 1887 , Sir (Arthur Conan Doyle), (A Study in Scarlet) , II:
  • That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
  • * (rfdate), (Benjamin Jowett).
  • Many coincidences . . . soon begin to appear in them [Greek inscriptions] which realize ancient history to us.
  • * (rfdate),
  • We can not realize it in thought, that the object . . . had really no being at any past moment.
  • (business) To acquire as an actual possession; to obtain as the result of plans and efforts; to gain; to get
  • * (rfdate) (Macaulay)
  • Knighthood was not beyond the reach of any man who could by diligent thrift realize a good estate.
  • (transitive, business, finance) To convert any kind of property into money, especially property representing investments, as shares, bonds, etc.
  • * (rfdate) (Washington Irving)
  • Wary men took the alarm, and began to realize , a word now first brought into use to express the conversion of ideal property into something real.
  • (transitive, business, obsolete) To convert into real property; to make real estate of.
  • Synonyms

    * (to convert to actuality) accomplish, actualize

    Derived terms

    * realizable * realization

    References

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