Fwd: "reify, v." - Word of the Day from the OED

[Dave Monroe]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: oedwotd at oup.com
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 01:30:00 +0100
Subject: "reify, v." - Word of the Day from the OED
To: OEDWOTD-L at webber.uk.hub.oup.com

OED Online Word of the Day

Your word for today is: reify, v.

reify, v.
[‘ trans. To make (something abstract) more concrete or real; to
regard or treat (an idea, concept, etc.) as if having material
existence.’]
Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈreɪᵻfʌɪ/, /ˈriːᵻfʌɪ/,  U.S. /ˈriəˌfaɪ/
Etymology: <  classical Latin rēs res n.1 + -ify suffix, after
reification n. Compare earlier deify v.
  trans. To make (something abstract) more concrete or real; to regard
or treat (an idea, concept, etc.) as if having material existence.
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.
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.
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.
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.

http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/161514

________________________________


Visit the OED's home page at http://www.oed.com