reify

English

WOTD – 22 August 2007

Etymology

Back-formation from reification, calque from German. Formed as Latin rēs (“thing”) +‎ -ify (English suffix).

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈɹiː.ə.faɪ/, /ˈɹeɪ.ə.faɪ/

• Audio (US):

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• Audio (US):

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Verb

reify (third-person singular simple present reifies, present participle reifying, simple past and past participle reified)

1. (transitive) To regard something abstract as if it were a concrete material thing.
   • 2024, Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake, New York, N.Y.: Scribner, page 349:

     What I've always appreciated about this concept of coincidence ... is how it reifies our search for causality, our need to establish logical connections among disparate events.

Synonyms

• concretize, objectify, picture, thingify

Coordinate terms

• realize (make real)

Derived terms

• dereification
• dereify
• reifiable
• reification
• reifier
• unreified

Translations

to regard something abstract as if it were a concrete material thing — see also concretize

Arabic: جَسَّدَ (jassada), جَسَّمَ (ar) (jassama) Bulgarian: материализирам (materializiram) Catalan: reïficar (ca) Dutch: concretiseren (nl), verstoffelijken (nl) Finnish: havainnollistaa (fi), tehdä käsinkosketeltavaksi, esineellistää (fi) French: réifier (fr) German: verdinglichen (de), vergegenständlichen (de), reifizieren (de) (rare) Hebrew: המחיש (he) (himkhísh) Macedonian: опредметува (opredmetuva) Norwegian: Bokmål: tingliggjøre Portuguese: coisificar (pt), reificar (pt) Russian: материализовать (ru) (materializovatʹ) Spanish: cosificar (es) Turkish: cisimleştirmek, maddeleştirmek, somutlaştırmak (tr)

See also

• conceptualize, hypostatize, personify

Anagrams

• fiery, firey