assimilation

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   The act of assimilating or the state of being assimilated.

   • --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.
   • 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.
2. 2

   The metabolic conversion of nutrients into tissue.

   • We have great need to be careful in these assimilations; some kinds of food are rich but not easily digested.
3. 3

   The absorption of new ideas into an existing cognitive structure.

4. ›+ 2 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      A sound change process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that…

      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.

      • Hence, rather than being the result of mishearing and assimilation, the application of Hobson-Jobson to the Muharram was intentionally disparaging.
   2. 5

      The adoption, by a minority group, of the customs and attitudes of the dominant culture.

      • After centuries of British cultural assimilation, a majority of Irish now speak English instead of Irish.
      • Assimilation was one of the words they used for Indians becoming white in order to survive, in order that they might not be killed for being Indians.
      • I do not use those terms to describe the purpose or the effects of particular federal Indian law doctrines in promoting the assimilation of Indians and Indian tribes into non-Indian culture or the general American polity.

The neighborhood

• antonymdissimilation
• neighboracculturation
• neighborliaison
• neighbormutation
• neighborrendaku
• neighborsandhi