[eyl-yuh-ney-shuh
n, ey-lee-uh-] 
| 1. | the act of alienating. |
| 2. | the state of being alienated. |
| 3. | Law. a transfer of the title to property by one person to another; conveyance. |
| 4. | the state of being withdrawn or isolated from the objective world, as through indifference or disaffection. |
| 5. | Statistics. the lack of correlation in the variation of two measurable variates over a population. |
A feeling of separation or isolation. In social science, alienation is associated with the problems caused by rapid social change, such as industrialization and urbanization (see Industrial Revolution), which has broken down traditional relationships among individuals and groups and the goods and services they produce.
Note: Alienation is most often associated with minorities, the poor, the unemployed, and other groups who have limited power to bring about changes in society.
Note: Marxism holds that workers in capitalist nations are alienated because they have no claim to ownership of the products they make.
alienation al·ien·a·tion (āl'yə-nā'shən, ā'lē-ə-)
n.
A state of estrangement between the self and the objective world or between different parts of the personality.