reify
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of reify
First recorded in 1850–55; from Latin rē(s) “thing” + -ify
Explanation
When you reify something abstract, you make it real. You might reify your affection for Italy by hanging posters of the Italian Riviera on your wall and cooking Italian food every night. Reify, which is three syllables — ree-uh-fye — comes from the Latin word res, which means "thing," with the suffix -fy, meaning "make into" or "produce," which you know from verbs like "horrify" and "falsify." You may already know the Latin word res, too. From your study of literature, you've probably encountered the phrase in medias res, "in the middle of things," used to describe a story that begins in the middle of the action.
Vocabulary lists containing reify
Power Suffix: -fy
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-fy
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -ify
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The brain latches on or compares itself to others, starting a negative cycle of thinking that can reify itself.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 1, 2024
This is related to a question of ethics, which is what is falling in that lacuna between greatness and crap that only criticism can both explicate and reify in some way.
From New York Times ● Jan. 7, 2022
They ask critical questions about colleges as sites that perpetuate classism, places that not only reify hierarchies of value but rely on it as part of their mythology.
From Salon ● Jul. 31, 2021
There seems to be a feedback mechanism now whereby the betting-market odds reify themselves.
From Slate ● Jul. 12, 2016
Markets reify this contribution, turning life, energy, doubts, time, or whatever else-in particular language-into the commodity embodied in the product.
From The Civilization of Illiteracy by Mihai Nadin
The babydoll dress has a long and complex history, one that’s been associated with women’s sartorial freedom as much as it’s reified their cultural infantilization.
From Salon ● Jun. 12, 2026
We play by a code of conduct, that nebulous thing we have reified as “international law.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 8, 2025
Each count, Mr Teltumbde argues, "did not merely record caste, but reified and hardened it".
From BBC ● Nov. 12, 2025
We see this push for closure reified across American culture.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 26, 2024
We are what we do In the contemporary world, communication is progressively reified and takes place more and more through the intermediary of the product.
From The Civilization of Illiteracy by Mihai Nadin
There is a difference, albeit a subtle one, between erasing one class of people while reifying another, and mocking the entire project of balancing genuine, and competing interests.
From Slate ● Dec. 5, 2022
Based off the conventions and what exists in the world in terms of cyborgian narratives, I wanted to contribute something that isn’t reifying those projects.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 29, 2022
It’s tough to know how purposeful these indictments about privilege are — they generally serve the narratives of the shows while reifying their stars, who are presented as being open to personal growth.
From New York Times ● Dec. 23, 2021
But if the Warhol Foundation were to rescue Interview, that would bring in new advertisers from the art world while reifying its status as a unique art object in its own right.
From Slate ● May 22, 2018
But this latter view is precisely the error of extreme realism, of reifying abstract concepts and holding the “universale a parte rei”: a theory which leads logically to monism.143 31.
From Ontology or the Theory of Being by Peter Coffey
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
