What do “reify” and “reification” mean in the context of (functional?) programming?

Question

I read this term a lot in blogs about haskell and functional programming (specially in sigfpe\'s blog) but I don\'t have a clue about what it means. I get away with not know

Answer 1

From the Haskell Wiki:

To "reify" something is to take something that is abstract and regard it as material. A classic example is the way that the ancients took abstract concepts (e.g. "victory") and turned them into deities (e.g. Nike, the Greek goddess of victory).

A reified type is a value that represents a type. Using reified types instead of real types means that you can do any manipulations with them that you can do with values.