assimilationnoun/əˌsɪməˈleɪʃən/

• 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

  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

  The absorption of new ideas into an existing cognitive structure.

• 4

  human-scienceslinguisticsphonologyA 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.
• 5

  human-sciencessciencessocial-scienceThe 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.