reify means to regard something abstract as if it were a concrete material thing. It carries an Arena rating of 1667, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, reify ranks #627 of 13,217 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,099 of 13,217 for Most Malleable Words, #1,156 of 13,217 for Most Satisfying to Say, #1,367 of 13,217 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words.
reify is pronounced /ˈɹiː.ə.faɪ/.
Why “reify” is a great word
To regard or treat an abstract concept as if it were a concrete, material thing, a back-formation from 'reification', a calque from German, formed from Latin rēs ("thing") and the English suffix -ify ("to make"), first attested in 1854. Unlike "concretize," which focuses on rendering an idea more specific or tangible, or "hypostatize," which implies granting an abstraction the status of an independent, substantial reality, to reify is to commit a quiet category error of perception. It is the act of pointing to a spreadsheet and calling it "the market," of mistaking a border on a map for the land itself, or of believing "society" can be arrested and jailed—the human compulsion to grant phantom substance to ghosts, mistaking the shadow we name for the light that casts it.
Etymology
Back-formation from reification, calque from German. Formed as Latin rēs (“thing”) + -ify (English suffix).
verb
- To regard something abstract as if it were a concrete material thing.“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.”
Words closest in meaning
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