-ation

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Action or process: strangulation.
2. n. The result of an action or process: acculturation.
3. n. State, condition, or quality of: eburnation.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A suffix of Latin origin, occurring in nouns of action, etc. These nouns are properly abstract nouns equivalent to English nouns in -ing, and are taken directly from the Latin, as citation, commendation, creation, education, liberation, etc., and formed in Latin (commendatio, etc.) from the verbs represented in English either by forms without suffix (from the Latin infinitive), as cite, commend, etc., or by forms in -ate (from the Latin perfect participle), as create, educate, liberate; or formed in modern speech, whether from verbs without suffix, as in fixation, quotation, etc., from fix, quote, etc., or from verbs in -ate, as concentration, desiccation, from concentrate, desiccate, etc., or from verbs of non-Latin origin, as starvation, flirtation, these being the earliest formations (in the middle of the eighteenth century) in -ation from verbs of native origin (starve, flirt). Some words in -ation have no accompanying verb in English, as constellation, lunation, negation, etc.

Wiktionary

1. n. An action or process - e.g. hibernation.
2. n. The result of an action or process - e.g. accumulation.
3. n. A state or quality - e.g. exhilaration.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. A suffix forming nouns of action, and often equivalent to the verbal substantive in -ing. It sometimes has the further meanings of state, and that which results from the action. Many of these nouns have verbs in -ate; ; many are derived through the French; ; and many are formed on verbs ending in the Greek formative -ize (Fr. -ise).