Assimilation
Pronunciation
- IPA: /əˌsɪməˈleɪʃən/
- Rhymes: -eɪʃən
Origin
From Medieval Latin assimilatio.
Full definition of assimilation
Noun
assimilation
(plural assimilations)- The act of assimilating or the state of being assimilated.
- 1797, An English Lady, A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Chapter , --France swarms with Gracchus's and Publicolas, who by imaginary assimilations of acts, which a change of manners has rendered different, fancy themselves more than equal to their prototypes.
- 1996, January 26, Bertha Husband, Double Identity, His work generally is full of assimilations and quotations from art that is not Mexican, and he's said, "Nationalism has nothing to do with my work.
- The metabolic conversion of nutrients into tissue.
- 1908, Washington Gladden, The Church and Modern Life Chapter , We have great need to be careful in these assimilations; some kinds of food are rich but not easily digested.
- (by extension) The absorption of new ideas into an existing cognitive structure.
- (phonology) A sound change process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary), so that a change of phoneme occurs.
- (sociology, cultural studies) The adoption, by a minority group, of the customs and attitudes of the dominant culture.