unification

English

WOTD – 18 January 2026

Etymology

Either:^[1]

from unify +‎ -ification (suffix forming nouns denoting acts or processes whereby subjects become something else); or
borrowed from French unification; or
borrowed from Italian unificazione.

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌjuːnɪfɪˈkeɪʃn̩/
(General American) IPA^(key): /ˌjunəfəˈkeɪʃən/
Audio (General American): (file)
(file)
Rhymes: -eɪʃən
Hyphenation: uni‧fi‧cat‧ion

Noun

unification (countable and uncountable, plural unifications)

The act or process of unifying.
Synonyms: unifying, union, uniting

Antonyms: deunification, dissolution, disunification, disuniting, dividing, division

Hyponym: reunification
- 1946 March–April, “Notes and News: The ‘Spirit of Progress,’ Victorian Railways”, in The Railway Magazine, London: Tothill Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 119:
  The route between Melbourne and Albury is one of the first scheduled, under the great Australian gauge unification scheme, for conversion to 4 ft. 8½ in., and this will permit through running between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
- 1958 January, Borderer [pseudonym], “Ten Years of British Railways”, in The Railway Magazine, London: Tothill Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 13:
  Despite criticisms which were made of the Railway Executive, it must be recalled that the general framework of the new railway set-up was established by statute, while this form of organisation was particularly well adapted for carrying out the unification of the railways—a very different thing from the purely political act of nationalisation, but an essential part of the objective of nationalisation.
The state of being unified.
Synonym: union

Antonyms: deunification, dissolution, disunification, disuniting, dividing, division

Hyponym: reunification
- 1936, D. M. B. Collier, C[ecil John] L’E[strange] Malone, “The Birth of a Country”, in Manchoukuo: Jewel of Asia, London: George Allen & Unwin […], →OCLC, page 21:
  Chinese domination in Manchuria was revived after the unification of China by the Sui Dynasty in a.d. 590, though this could not be called entirely complete because the Kaokouli kingdom could not be subjugated.
- 1957, Chiang Chung-cheng (Chiang Kai-shek), Soviet Russia in China: A Summing-up at Seventy, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, →OCLC, page 146:
  On November 15 our Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed Soviet ambassador Petrov of this decision. At the same time I sent a message to President Harry S. Truman, pointing out that Soviet Russia's treaty violations and bad faith in Manchuria not only were detrimental to China's territorial integrity and unification, but also constituted a serious threat to peace and order in East Asia, and that the only way to prevent any further deterioration of the situation would be for China and the United States to take positive and coordinated actions.
- 1978, Richard Nixon, quoting Syngman Rhee, “Vice President 1953–1960”, in RN: the Memoirs of Richard Nixon, New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →ISBN, page 127:
  On the other hand, I must think of Korea and, particularly, of the three million enslaved Koreans in the North. My obligation as a leader of the Korean people is to achieve unification of our country by peaceful means if possible but by force if necessary.
(computer science, logic) An algorithmic process of solving equations between symbolic expressions.
- 1982, Wolfgang Bibel, “The Connection Method in First-order Logic”, in Automated Theorem Proving, Braunschweig, Lower Saxony; Wiesbaden, Hesse: Friedr[ich] Vieweg & Sohn, →DOI, →ISBN, page 94:
  For any two terms or formulas without quantifiers $X$ and $Y$ , the following holds. (i) The unification algorithm $UNIF_{1}$ , applied to $X$ , $Y$ , terminates after a finite number of steps. (ii) $\{X,Y\}$ is unifiable iff $UNIF_{1}$ so indicates upon termination. Moreover, the substitution σ then available as output is a most general unifier of $\{X,Y\}$ .