unifying

1. 1
   adjective

   Tending to bring people, groups, or ideas together into a single whole.

   Like a thread that stitches separate patches into a single quilt.

   Her unifying vision helped the rival departments finally work as one team.

   The flag became a unifying symbol during the country's long struggle for independence.

   Oppositedivisive, polarizing

   Note

   One test separates the adjective from the verb form: it can be graded, as in a more unifying candidate or the most unifying cause of the campaign, and it takes no object. It sits most naturally before nouns for ideas and emblems, such as vision, theme, symbol and principle. When unifying is followed by the things being joined, as in unifying the parties, it is the verb again.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of unify.

   The treaty is unifying several small states under one government.

   Unifying the scattered records took the archivists the better part of a year.

   Note

   The verb at work, still able to take an object: the treaty is unifying several states, and unifying the records took a year. Unify can be transitive or intransitive, so the participle can also stand alone, as in the factions are slowly unifying. Followed directly by its object, it stays verbal. Once it takes of, as in the unifying of two agencies, it has become the noun for the process.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The act or process of bringing separate things together into a single whole.

   Like merging two companies into a single firm.

   The unifying of East and West marked a turning point in the nation's history.

   Critics questioned whether the unifying of the two agencies would improve efficiency.

   Similarunification, merger, integration, consolidation

   Oppositedivision, separation, fragmentation

   Note

   Unification names the same thing, but the -ing noun keeps the feel of an action still under way. It can also be pluralized for repeated acts of joining. Sri Aurobindo's The Synthesis of Yoga (1990) sets "difficult solderings and unifyings" side by side, and the plural there suggests many small, effortful joinings rather than one finished union.

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