Meanings
- The fact or process of turning something into a thing.
Dictionaries alone aren't responsible for the thingification of natural languages, but they crystallized a peculiar modern view of what it means to have a language.
2011, David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, Penguin, published 2012, page 991 more example
This is what happens when a country doesn’t see some people as fully human. It’s what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the “thingification of the Negro.”
2021 September 23, Charles M. Blow, quoting Martin Luther King Jr., “Gwen Ifill Was Right About ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome’”, in The New York Times, →ISSNSynonyms: objectification, reification
Synonyms & antonyms
nounThe fact or process of turning something into a thing.
Origin
From thing + -ification, following thingify.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
thingification. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/thingification
“thingification.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/thingification. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “thingification,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/thingification.
Source: thingification on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.