The process of a country, a place, or a way of life taking on the customs, clothes, food, business methods, laws or ideas that are typical of Western Europe and North America — or the state of having done so. It is the noun that goes with the verb *westernize*. You meet it mostly in serious writing: history, sociology, news reports, school essays about Japan's Meiji period, or Turkey, or China, or Taiwan's own last century. Some texture you should have. The word is not neutral, and different speakers load it differently. Used flatly, it just names a change — Western-style suits, Western-style banking, Western-style schooling. But it very often carries a hint of loss, as if something local were being pushed out; that is why writers who want to sound fair now often prefer *modernization* or *globalization*, and why arguing about which of those three words is the right one is itself a common topic. Note also that "Western" here is a cultural label, not a compass reading: Japan is far to the east of Europe, but a coffee shop in Tokyo can still be called westernized. The British spelling is *westernisation*, with an s; Taiwan's schools generally teach the American *-ization*. It is an uncountable noun, so it takes no *a* and no plural.

西化、西方化