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reconciliation

nounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˌɹɛk(ə)nsɪlɪˈeɪʃ(ə)n//
  • United States//ˌɹɛkənˌsɪliˈeɪʃ(ə)n//

The re-establishment of friendly relations; conciliation, rapprochement.

noun

  1. 1

    The re-establishment of friendly relations; conciliation, rapprochement.

    He longed for reconciliation with his estranged father, but painful memories made him feel unready to do so.

  2. 2

    The process of comparing and resolving apparent differences between sets of accounting records, or between accounting records and bank statements, receipts, etc.

  3. 3

    Religious senses. The end of estrangement between a human and God as a result of atonement.

  4. 4

    Religious senses. The reconsecration of a desecrated church or other holy site.

  5. 5

    Religious senses. Admission of a person to membership of the church, or readmission after the person has previously left the church.

  6. 6

    A special parliamentary procedure of the United States Congress to expedite the passage of certain federal budget legislation in the Senate, overriding the Senate's filibuster rules.

  7. 7

    The process of systemically atoning for the crimes and broken promises that a nation has historically committed against indigenous people.

    In order to redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission makes the following calls to action.

    The comments were made at a council meeting last month, during which one councillor questioned whether changing the names would be pushing reconciliation efforts along too quickly.

  8. 8

    Variant of sacrament of reconciliationReligious senses. Ellipsis of sacrament of reconciliation (“a sacrament (sacred ritual) also called confession, involving contrition by a person, confessing sins to a priest, penance performed by the person, and absolution granted by the priest”).

Etymology

From Middle English reconciliacioun (“act of reconciling; state of accord or harmony;”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman reconciliaciun, reconsiliacion, reconsiliaciun, and Middle French reconciliation, reconsiliacion, reconsiliation (“act of reconciling; result of this act; act of bringing about agreement or harmony; reconsecration of a desecrated place”) (modern French réconciliation), and from their Latin etymon reconciliātiō (“reinstatement, renewal, restoration; reconciliation”), from reconciliāre + -tiō.

Forms

plural
reconciliations
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).