The term is most straightforwardly used when qualifying another adjective: a real x may be contrasted with a fake x, a failed x, a near x, and so on. To treat something as real, without qualification, is to suppose it to be part of the actual world. To reify something is to suppose that we are committed by some doctrine to treating it as a thing. The central error in thinking of reality and existence is to think of the unreal as a separate domain of things, perhaps unfairly deprived of the benefits of existence. See also being, existence, nothing, quantifier, realism/anti-realism.