Dictionary

punctualize en · VERB

Etymology

From punctual + -ize.

Meanings

1. To render as, or turn into, a point; (specifically, sociology) to consider a conceptual or social network as a single point-like entity or “black box”.
   • The black box metaphor in actor-network theory was never meant to be used to describe a stable state of affairs, but to highlight the human and social tendency to punctualize networks of relations in black boxes. 2021, Francis Lee, “Enacting the Pandemic: Analyzing Agency, Opacity, and Power in Algorithmic Assemblages”, in Science & Technology Studies, volume 34, number 1, →DOI, page 88, note 9:
   • MSNBC.com in 2010 was a quintessentially postmodern organization […] We can speak of its needs, its managerial decisions, and the systems it builds—we can punctualize it, to use the ANT term […] but in doing so, we must ourselves be reflexive about the fact that we are ultimately employing a construction. 2015, Joshua A. Braun, This Program Is Brought to You By…: Distributing Television News Online, →ISBN, page 169:
   • One of the complaints sometimes made concerning phenomenology is that it seems to substantialize the self, that it makes the ego into a kind of fixed point that escapes its own history […] But phenomenology does not punctualize the self […] 2000, Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, →ISBN, page 127:
   • Certainly, some networks are easier to punctualize than others. They are network packages, routines, taken for granted. 2006, Magdalena Nowicka, Transnational Professionals and Their Cosmopolitan Universes, →ISBN, page 181:
2. To express an action as happening at a specific moment.
   • Among indices of the first type, we find not only adverbs like hier ‘yesterday’, but also a variety of other expressions that serve to punctualize or indicate a specific time. 1980, Gillian Sankoff, The Social Life of Language, →ISBN, page 318:
   • The ability to punctualize an act is therefore highly conducive to keeping verbs outside the aspectual system […] 1997, Neil Bermel, Context and the Lexicon in the Development of Russian Aspect, →ISBN, page 402:
   • Their distribution is complementary insofar as preverbs mark the punctuality of accomplishments (and some achievements), whereas the doni suffix punctualizes activities and states. 1981, Dee Ann Holisky, “Aspect Theory and Georgian Aspect”, in Phillip Tedeschi, Annie Zaenen, editors, Tense and Aspect, →ISBN:

Forms

Deriveds

punctualization