Assimilation

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /əˌsɪməˈleɪʃən/

Definitions

1. The process by which individuals or groups adopt the cultural traits, customs, and behaviors of another society or dominant culture
2. The act of integrating or absorbing elements from one culture into another while often resulting in changes to identity and social dynamics occurs during this phenomenon
3. This refers to the transition process in which a person or group adopts the characteristics of a different culture, affecting their social identity and practices

Etymology: Assimilation is one of those words whose core meaning, making one thing like another, was stretched from physical matter into human societies. The idea behind it is the old Latin verb "assimilare," meaning to make like or to liken, built from "ad" (to) and "similis" (like). Its Medieval Latin descendant "assimilatio" carried that sense of making alike, and English took the word over from there. In English, the word first described things becoming like one another in a physical or chemical way, and it was used for the transformation of food into the body's own substance. Only later did it move into the study of peoples, where it came to mean a minority group gradually taking on the customs and language of a dominant one. The social sense is therefore a metaphor built on the older idea of one body absorbing another.

Synonyms: integration, absorption, adaptation, incorporation, melding

Antonyms: segregation, isolation, alienation