Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Intellectual, moral, or spiritual improvement; enlightenment.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act or process of building; construction.
  • noun The thing built; a building; an edifice.
  • noun The act of edifying or instructing, or the state of being edified; improvement of the mind; enlightenment: most frequently used with reference to morals or religion.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of edifying, or the state of being edified; a building up, especially in a moral or spiritual sense; moral, intellectual, or spiritual improvement; instruction.
  • noun obsolete A building or edifice.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of edifying, or the state of being edified; a building up, especially in a moral, emotional, or spiritual sense; moral, intellectual, or spiritual improvement; through encouragement and instruction.
  • noun archaic A building or edifice.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun uplifting enlightenment

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French, from Latin aedificationem ("building, construction"), an accusative form of aedificatio, from aedificare.

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Examples

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  • Heard in Criminal Minds S04E15. A student girl said that she's studying criminology for her own edification.

    January 5, 2010