substantify

Verb

1. To give material form or substance to; to embody.
   • With the problems of theory domain and theory focus out of the way, we are now ready to design and set down an integrating construct which will substantify, hold together and make opertional the theoretical framework. -...
   • Matthew tries to draw an analogy between the divine person and the divine nature: just as the infinite divine nature can be substantified in many divine persons, so the infinite divine person can substantify many...
   • The First does not need two elements—one being to substantify (give substance to) its “essence”; the other to create or communicate “through which something else comes from it” (alFarabi, 1985, p. 93). - 2014, Simon...
2. To reify or hypostatize; to treat something that is fluid or abstract as a static entity without regard to nuance or change in character.
   • It is partly because almost inevitably a word, referring to a vague intimation of reality, tends to substantify and reify the insight with time. - 1966, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association:
   • I think that Aristotle may have noticed that pressing the question "When is Y a potential X?" seemed to "substantify" accidental states of bodies, and dimly saw that if one once began to chop up the realm of the...
   • In so far as the culturalist view of societies tries to be systematic, its limitations are obvious: to substantify a singular culture is to ignore its intrinsically problematic character (sometimes brought to light,...
3. To endow with a consciousness, will, motivation and independent existence; to give life to; to hypostatize.
   • having reduced the intensity and complexity of His life and Love to bring into existence the upper reaches of the spiritual universe (spiritual substances and atmospheres), then with diminished intensity the lower...
   • We see that the refusal to “substantify” particular beings reduces them to mere functions, types of activity, beingless things; for example, when the occupant of a hotel-room is designated by his room-number, when human...
   • Here Newton identifies the propensity in human language to hypostatize, personify and substantify abstractions. - 2008, Jitse M. van der Meer, Scott Mandelbrote, Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic religions:
4. To transform into or treat syntactically as a noun; to make into or use as a substantive.
   • They are, in fact, equivalent to the infinitive which some languages substantify directly (das Rennen, das Sprechen, le manger, le boire, le dormir). - 1913, Arnold Ruge, Wilhelm Windelband, Josiah Royce, Logic - Volume...
   • Lexical items are more or less the accidental results of transformations which substantify, or 'incorporate', the trees referred to in (i), or constituent parts ('subtrees') of them, into entities which, for reasons of...
   • The definite article was used particularly to substantify pronouns, adjectives and adverbs, but appears always to have retained the quality of a demonstrative. - 1981, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, A Functional Approach to...