reification

Meanings

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. 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. The transformation of a natural-language statement into a form in which its actions and events are quantifiable variables.

Etymology

First attested around 1846; a macaronic calque of German Verdinglichung, using -ification (“making”) for ver- + -lich + -ung, and Latin rēs (“thing”) for Ding (“thing”)