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PlainSpell

reification

/ˌɹeɪəfəˈkeɪʃən/noun

reification is a noun meaning “The consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-E-I-F-I-C-A-T-I-O-N, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of reification is reifications.

What does reification mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living.

  2. 2

    The consideration of a human being as an impersonal object.

  3. 3

    A process that makes a computable/addressable object out of a non-computable/addressable one; or a concrete class out of a generic one.

  4. 4

    The transformation of a natural-language statement into a form in which its actions and events are quantifiable variables.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce reification?

  • /ˌɹeɪəfəˈkeɪʃən/
  • /ˈɹiː.ə.fəˈkeɪʃən/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-NaomiAmethyst-reification.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of reification

  • reifications plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is reification?

Reification appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 110,368th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Reification in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchréification (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it…)
GermanVerdinglichung, Vergegenständlichung, Reifikation (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it…), Reifizierung (programming: Process that makes out of a…)
Portuguesereificação (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it…)
Spanishcosificación, reificación (Consideration of an abstract thing as if it…)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does reification come 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”)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).