reification

Meaning

Noun

• The consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living.
• The consideration of a human being as an impersonal object.
• Process that makes a computable/addressable object out of a non-computable/addressable one.
• The transformation of a natural-language statement into a form in which its actions and events are quantifiable variables.

Related

Similar words

• hypostatization
• objectification
• pathetic fallacy
• thingification

Origin

• First attested around 1846; a macaronic calque of German Verdinglichung, using -ification for ver- + -lich + -ung, and Latin res for Ding