integration

/ˈɪntəˌgreɪʃən/

/ɪntəˈgreɪʃən/

Other forms: integrations

Integration occurs when separate people or things are brought together, like the integration of students from all of the district's elementary schools at the new middle school, or the integration of snowboarding on all ski slopes.

You may know the word differentiate, meaning "set apart." Integrate is its opposite. When you integrate things, you bring them together. So integration is the act of doing just that, like the integration of African-American students into mixed-race schools after segregation was outlawed in the 1950s, or the integration of computers in businesses that had previously only used paper-based record-keeping.

Definitions of integration

1. noun

   the act of combining into an integral whole
   synonyms: consolidation

   types:

   centralisation, centralization

   the act of consolidating power under a central control

   incorporation

   consolidating two or more things; union in (or into) one body

   amalgamation, merger, uniting

   the combination of two or more commercial companies

   vertical combination, vertical integration

   absorption into a single firm of several firms involved in all aspects of a product's manufacture from raw materials to distribution

   horizontal combination, horizontal integration

   absorption into a single firm of several firms involved in the same level of production and sharing resources at that level

   type of:

   combination, combining, compounding

   the act of combining things to form a new whole
2. noun

   the action of incorporating a racial or religious group into a community
   synonyms: desegregation, integrating

   antonyms:

   segregation

   the act of segregating or sequestering

   type of:

   group action

   action taken by a group of people
3. noun

   an operation used in the calculus whereby the integral of a function is determined
   type of:

   mathematical operation, mathematical process, operation

   (mathematics) calculation by mathematical methods