punctualize

Verb

punctualize (third-person singular simple present punctualizes, present participle punctualizing, simple past and past participle punctualized)

1. To render as, or turn into, a point; (specifically, sociology) to consider a conceptual or social network as a single point-like entity or “black box”.
   • One of the complaints sometimes made concerning phenomenology is that it seems to substantialize the self, that it makes the ego into a kind of fixed point that escapes its own history […] But phenomenology does not punctualize the self […]2000, Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, →ISBN, page 127
   • Certainly, some networks are easier to punctualize than others. They are network packages, routines, taken for granted.2006, Magdalena Nowicka, Transnational Professionals and Their Cosmopolitan Universes, →ISBN, page 181
2. To express an action as happening at a specific moment.
   • Among indices of the first type, we find not only adverbs like hier ‘yesterday’, but also a variety of other expressions that serve to punctualize or indicate a specific time.1980, Gillian Sankoff, The Social Life of Language, →ISBN, page 318
   • Their distribution is complementary insofar as preverbs mark the punctuality of accomplishments (and some achievements), whereas the doni suffix punctualizes activities and states.1981, Dee Ann Holisky, “Aspect Theory and Georgian Aspect”, in Phillip Tedeschi, Annie Zaenen, editors, Tense and Aspect, →ISBN