Reunification

How to spell reunification

13 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce reunification

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reunification mean?

1. nounThe process of bringing together again into a single whole something that had been split or divided, especially a country or political territory.

Reunification in a sentence

• The reunification of the country in 1990 ended decades of political division.

• Historians still debate the economic cost of national reunification.

Where does reunification come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from Latin roots and assembled in the modern era. At its core sits the Latin unus, meaning 'one', joined to facere, 'to make', a pairing that gives the idea of 'making into one' and underlies the verb 'unify'. To that English added the noun suffix -ation, which marks an action or process, producing 'unification', a term that spread in political writing during the nineteenth century, notably about the unification of Italy and Germany. The prefix re-, Latin for 'again' or 'back', was then placed in front to express the act of joining together once more something that had been divided. The word became especially common in the twentieth century in discussions of divided nations, above all the reunification of Germany in 1990. The spelling trap lies in the run of weak, unstressed vowels in the middle (un-i-fi-ca-tion), where each i and the a slip toward an indistinct sound, so the only safe guide is the family of related words: unify, unity, and unification.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• uni- (one, from Latin unus)
• -fic- (make, from facere)
• -ation (noun of action)