realise

Less common meanings

4. 4
   cash inverbtransitive

   To turn an asset or property, especially an investment such as shares or bonds, into money or another easily used form, usually by selling it.

   The administrators will realise the firm's remaining assets to pay its creditors.

   To pay the inheritance tax, the family had to realise part of the estate, including two farms.

   UsageThe object is the thing sold: realise assets, realise shares. Compare realise a profit, where the object is the money that comes back.

   Similarliquidate, sell

   Note

   The verb of winding up a business: a liquidator or administrator realises a company's assets, turning property into money for creditors and shareholders. Investors realise holdings in the same way when they sell shares or bonds.

5. 5
   make moneyverbtransitive or intransitive

   To obtain money or a profit through the sale of an asset or property, or through trade; with on, to profit from an investment or venture.

   The family realised a large profit when they sold the farmland to a developer.

   Shareholders could realise a substantial gain if the takeover goes ahead.

   UsageThe object is the money: realise a profit, a gain or a sum. With on, it means cashing something in: realise on shares.

   Similarmake, net, earn, gain, clear

   Note

   An accountant's distinction rests on this meaning: a realised gain has been turned into money by a sale, while an unrealised one is a rise in value that exists only on paper. With on, the verb means cashing in a holding: in Willa Cather's The Professor's House (1925), Rodney supposes his friend always meant to realise on the things he was proud of. Source

   Checked 4 Nov 2026 · 4 facts

   • Selling an investment realises its gain. investor.gov
   • An unrealised investment gain is an increase in value before sale. fidelity.com
   • Willa Cather wrote The Professor's House, first published in 1925. en.wikipedia.org
   • Rodney supposes that his friend intended to realise on the things he valued and took pride in. fadedpage.com
6. 6
   verbtransitive

   Of an asset or property, to bring in a particular sum of money or interest when it is sold or invested.

   The painting realised £2.3 million at auction, far above its estimate.

   With so few buyers about, the farmland may realise far less than the agent promised.

   UsageThe thing sold is the subject: the clock realised £800. It works like fetch.

   Similarfetch, yield

7. 7
   show vividlyverbtransitive

   To make something seem real, either by depicting it realistically or by bringing it vividly before someone's mind.

   The novel realises the noise and crowding of a Victorian slum with startling force.

   Good stage design can realise a whole forest with little more than light and a few branches.

   UsageMost often in reviews, in the passive with an adverb: a beautifully realised world, a vividly realised character.

   Similarevoke, capture, depict, render, portray

   Note

   Older religious writing leaned on this verb. Richard Baxter says faith may realise salvation to the soul; the anonymous Life of Mr. Henry Dorney has true faith realising things absent, remote and future. In Defoe's Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, something imagined is so realised that it is taken for true. Presenting a thing to oneself this way is now archaic, though a novel or stage set can still realise a scene. Source

   Checked 4 Nov 2026 · 4 facts

   • Richard Baxter uses realise of faith making salvation real to the soul, supporting the historical religious use. en.wiktionary.org
   • The anonymous Life of Mr. Henry Dorney describes true faith as realising absent, remote and future things. en.wiktionary.org
   • Daniel Defoe wrote The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. en.wikipedia.org
   • The novel's narrator describes something imagined as so realised to him that he believed it was or would be true. gutenberg.org
8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To feel or picture something so strongly and clearly that it seems real.

   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.

   1887, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “A Study in Scarlet”

   UsageMost often in the negative: someone could hardly realise or could not realise a thing, meaning it would not feel real to them.

   Similarimagine, picture, visualise

   Note

   It is at home in the negative, after could not or could hardly. Watson, in Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet (1887), could hardly realise that a civilised man did not know the earth travelled round the sun. The fact had not escaped him, as with the becoming-aware meaning; it simply refused to feel real. Source

   Checked 4 Nov 2026 · 5 facts

   • Arthur Conan Doyle wrote A Study in Scarlet. gutenberg.org
   • A Study in Scarlet was first published in 1887. gutenberg.net.au
   • Watson is the narrator of the passage. gutenberg.org
   • Watson describes finding a civilised person's ignorance of the earth's movement round the sun almost impossible to realise. gutenberg.org
   • Watson has already discovered Holmes's ignorance; his difficulty is accepting its extraordinary nature. gutenberg.org
9. 9
   verbobsoleteUStransitive

   To have actual, first-hand experience of something.

   Note

   Recorded from American English and now obsolete: to realise something was to meet it in real experience, to live through it rather than imagine it. Because the becoming-aware meaning and the vivid-sensing meaning also turn on what feels real, an old sentence can be hard to assign to one of them. Present-day English says experience or go through. Source

   Checked 4 Nov 2026 · 2 facts

   • The firsthand-experience sense is recorded as American English and obsolete. en.wiktionary.org
   • The historical sense meant actually experiencing something. en.wiktionary.org
10. 10
    verb

    To pronounce an abstract unit of a language's sound system, especially a phoneme, as a particular sound that speakers actually produce.
11. 11
    verb

    To complete a musical work that was left unfinished or was never written out in full.
12. 12
    verb

    To arrange a piece of music written for a single performer so that an orchestra can play it.
13. 13
    verb

    Chiefly in Baroque music, to play the harmonies or accompaniment indicated by a figured bass.
14. 14
    verb

    In mathematics, to produce a particular object from an abstract group or structure.