reifyv.
/ˈreɪᵻfʌɪ/, /ˈriːᵻfʌɪ/, U.S. /ˈriəˌfaɪ/ transitive. To make (something abstract) more concrete or real; to regard or treat (an idea, concept, etc.) as if having material existence.
ΘΚΠ
the world > existence and causation > existence > materiality > render material [verb (transitive)]
immerse1605
clod1610
material1643
corporify1644
terrestrify1646
corporize1691
materialize1710
terrestrialize1829
reify1854
thingify1871
sensualize1884
the mind > mental capacity > understanding > understand [verb (transitive)] > reach understanding of
conceive1340
grope1390
tellc1390
catchc1475
reacha1500
make1531
to make sense of1574
to make outa1625
apprehend1631
realize1742
finda1834
reify1854
recognize1879
to get (something) straight1920
to pick up1946
to work out1953
1854 Fraser's Mag. 69 75 The gods of their final and accepted polytheism were, in point of fact, only those sublimer portions of nature which..they had not yet dared to reify.
1882 Pop. Sci. Monthly June 151 When people make or find a new ‘abstract noun’, they instantly try to put it on a shelf or into a box, as though it were a thing; thus they reify it.
1931 M. R. Cohen Reason & Nature iii. iii. 390 There is..a fundamental philosophic issue: the extent to which the principle of unity should be hypostatized or reified (I wish the use of the word thingified were more common).
1953 C. E. Osgood Method & Theory Exper. Psychol. xvi. 680 The second hindrance to objectivity is the ubiquitous tendency to reify the word, to assume the word itself somehow carries its own meaning.
1971 Times Lit. Suppl. 31 Dec. 1619/3 To look upon them [sc. economic laws] as objective necessities, as bourgeois economists do, is to reify them.
2005 Brit. Jrnl. Hist. Sci. 38 346 The neo-Hippocratic movement seemed to unite specifically around concerns that language, through the temptations it offered to reify abstractions, operated as an obstacle to sound diagnostics.
Derivatives
ˈreified adj.
ΘΚΠ
the world > existence and causation > existence > materiality > [adjective] > making material > made material
corporized1662
corporified1680
materialized1845
reified1896
corporealized-
the mind > mental capacity > philosophy > metaphysics > [adjective] > of or relating to substance > converted mentally into a thing
reified1896
1896 Amer. Anthropologist 9 72 The substrate of matter, a reified nothing, is entertained in the minds of some as an entity.
2005 L. Holford-Strevens Hist. Time p. iii No pretence to greater wisdom is made in this book; whether time is a fourth dimension of the universe or a reified abstraction, whether it is continuous or atomistic,..are for others to determine.
ˈreifier n.
ΚΠ
1940 E. Freeman Conquering Man in Street xi. 152 In their dogged insistence upon the group mind as a reality the Totalitarians have simply been more emphatic reifiers.
2002 Hypatia (Nexis) Spring 133 As a typist I was a reifier of speech.
ˈreifying n. and adj.
ΚΠ
1896 Philos. Rev. 5 642 It is still an open question whether that ‘reifying’ of the darkness..is not really the same thing as that peopling of the darkness with robbers and tigers.
1969 R. Blackburn in A. Cockburn & R. Blackburn Student Power 207 An alienated society naturally encourages a re-ifying vocabulary.
1996 M. Jay in T. Brennan & M. Jay Vision in Context 6 Sartre's dark analysis of the reifying power of the gaze.
2000 S. Hamilton Early Buddhism vi. 148 The way it is ritually used demonstrates its power in the reifying of symbolic movements, for example.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2009; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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