Meaning

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

Definitions by Sense

1. The consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living.
2. The consideration of a human being as an impersonal object.
3. (programming) 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. (linguistics) The transformation of a natural-language statement into a form in which its actions and events are quantifiable variables.

Example Sentences

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.’

Computer scientists found out how functional reification is in programming languages: they call it ‘object-oriented programming’ […].

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.”

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#).

Word Forms

• reifications

Synonyms for reification

Related Words

When Should You Use Reification?

Use reification when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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