mercification

M3E1R1C3I1F4I1C3A1T1I1O1N1

noun

The transformation into a setting for and about buying and selling; commercialization; consumerization.

Scrabble 22

Meanings

nounmercification (uncountable)
  1. uncountableThe transformation into a setting for and about buying and selling; commercialization; consumerization.

    The flâneur is a kind of rebel contrasting mercification, yet he is also consumer and producer himself.

    2016, Timothy Shortell, Evrick Brown, Walking in the European City: Quotidian Mobility and Urban Ethnography, →ISBN
    4 more examples

    Let us not forget that, from another point of view, the body, through the economics of self-care (from diets to body building, from ayurvedic care to extreme sports) acquires grandeur, social representativeness, and excellence like animated self-advertising ware in the expanding universe of mercification.

    2009, Bianca Maria Pirani, Ivan Varga, The New Boundaries between Bodies and Technologies, →ISBN, page 100

    The "generic city" is the city of shopping and leisure which has increasingly claimed in modern cities to simulate reality. And indeed this phenomenon of intense mercification of society has dissolved the relationship between urbs, the city meant as a physical place, and civitas, the city as the society inhabiting it.

    2009, Giovanni Maciocco, Silvia Serreli, Enhancing the City.: New Perspectives for Tourism and Leisure, →ISBN

    This character relies also on its architecture, but specifically on "its regional mercification", represented by disco-pubs, piadina booths and historic restaurants serving good fish.

    2010, Alessandro Bucci, Luigi Mollo, Regional Architecture in the Mediterranean Area, →ISBN, page 291

    When the youth of Cairo and Madrid occupied the main squares of Tahrir and Puerta del Sol in 2011, they meant to take possession of the urban fabric which had lost the meaning of being a natural arena for social action, either because of obsessive security policies (Cairo) or because of mercification into open air malls (Madrid).

    2017, Gianluca Solera, Citizen Activism and Mediterranean Identity: Beyond Eurocentrism, →ISBN
Cite this entry
APA

mercification. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mercification

MLA

“mercification.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mercification. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “mercification,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mercification.

Source: mercification on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.