reification
The consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living.
countable, uncountable
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.’
The consideration of a human being as an impersonal object.
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.
countable, uncountable
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#).
The transformation of a natural-language statement into a form in which its actions and events are quantifiable variables.
countable, uncountable
Where it comes from
First attested around 1846; a macaronic calque of German Verdinglichung, using -ification (“making”) for ver- + -lich + -ung, and Latin rēs (“thing”) for Ding (“thing”)
Adapted from the Wiktionary entry reification (CC BY-SA 4.0).