Dictionary

reification en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio
• /ˌɹeɪəfəˈkeɪʃən/
• rāəfəkāshən
• /ˈɹiː.ə.fəˈkeɪʃən/

Etymology

First attested around 1846; a macaronic calque of German Verdinglichung, using -ification (“making”) for ver- + -lich + -ung, and Latin rēs (“thing”) for Ding (“thing”)

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) The consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living.
   • The reification of art and religion, a symptom of their historical obsolescence, takes the form of their instrumentalization, their reduction to a mere use value. At this point they become ‘cultural goods’, writes Adorno, and ‘are no longer taken quite seriously by anybody.’ 2002, Timothy Bewes, Reification: Or The Anxiety of Late Capitalism, Verso, →ISBN, page 146:
   • Reification swaps out a political problem for a scientific or technical one; it’s how, for example, the effects of unregulated tech oligopolies become “social media addiction,” how climate catastrophe caused by corporate greed becomes a “heat wave” — and, by the way, how the effect of struggles between labor and corporations combines with high energy prices to become “inflation.” 2022 September 20, Danielle Carr, “Mental Health Is Political”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
   • Computer scientists found out how functional reification is in programming languages: they call it ‘object-oriented programming’ […]. 2018, Pieter Seuren, Saussure and Sechehaye […] , BRILL, →ISBN, page 209:
2. (countable, uncountable) The consideration of a human being as an impersonal object.
3. (countable, uncountable) A process that makes a computable/addressable object out of a non-computable/addressable one; or a concrete class out of a generic one.
   • Contrary to Java, C++ and C# implement generics via reification, meaning that each specific version of a generic class, like List<String> is converted into a concrete class, either at compile time (C++) or at runtime (C#). 2020, Marco Faella, Seriously Good Software: Code that works, survives, and wins, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 251:
4. (countable, uncountable) The transformation of a natural-language statement into a form in which its actions and events are quantifiable variables.

Forms

Deriveds

reificatory · reificational · dereification

Relateds

reify

Synonyms

objectification · materialization · pathetic fallacy · thingification · hypostatization

Translations (20)

cmn 具象化 (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · tr soyutlaştırma (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · tr maddeleştirme (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · bg материализиране (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · no tingliggjøring (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · es cosificación (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · he חיפצון (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · de Reifizierung (programming: Process that makes out of a non-computable/addressable object a computable/addressable one) · es reificación (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · el υποστατοποίηση (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · mk опредметување (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · ru реификация (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · de Reifikation (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · tr cisimleştirme (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · pt reificação (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · fr réification (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · de Vergegenständlichung (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · ko 실재화 (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · de Verdinglichung (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living) · fi konkretisointi (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living)