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Thus to botanize is to go around "following some practice" associated with botany ("doing botany") and to womanize is to go around "following some practice" associated with women ("doing women"). This coinage worked in Victorian or Edwardian England (because why else would a man pay attention to women taken as a group?), and once established, it persisted as a useful term for a common concept.
[languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu...]