Nominalization

“Nominalization: 1. The process or result of forming a noun from a word belonging to another word class: writing/writings and shaving/shavings derived from write and shave and adding -ing; sanity derived from sane by the addition of the noun-forming suffix -ity; nominalization derived from nominalize by adding -ation. 2. The process or result of deriving a noun phrase by a transformation from a finite clause: their rejecting my complaint or their rejection of my complaint from They rejected my complaint.”

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.