reify

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Factor analysis is harmless as data reduction, but it is tempting to "reify" the factors, to suppose that they are the hidden causes behind the observations.

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Definitions (3)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. transitive verb To regard or treat (an abstraction) as if it had concrete or material existence.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (1)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (1)

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Examples (28)

  • In short, the recommender industry is the evolving business of building and deploying systems that reify some of the psychology of human economic transactions. —  Strands Blog
  • In that recommender systems reify aspects of the psychology of economic transactions, there is an increasing appreciation for the probable value of responding to how economic behavior changes over time. —  Strands Blog
  • Parental indentifications, which inevitably reify Oedipus, are no longer constitutive; and the "lost object," which is relentlessly relegated to a feminized fetish, is diffused so that any object and any part of the body can become an erotogenic zone. —  1tbm
  • If that superstition means that people don't book airplane flights on Friday the 13th, then they reify that superstition into a fact that exists in the airlines 'bookkeeping records. —  Serendip's Exchange -
  • But it's not the only aspect of our economic fortunes and the mistake is to reify it to too great a degree. —  The Cedar Lounge Revolution
 

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin rēs, rē-, thing; see rē- in Indo-European roots + -fy.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Latin res, a thing, + -ficare, from facere, make (see -fy).
 

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/ˈriɪfai/
by American Heritage

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