reconciliation

noun

rec·​on·​cil·​i·​a·​tion ˌre-kən-ˌsi-lē-ˈā-shən 

1

: the action of reconciling : the state of being reconciled

2

: the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance

3

US government : a legislative process that enables expedited passage of a bill relating to certain matters in the federal budget by a simple majority of votes

used reconciliation to repeal the bill passed during the prior session of Congress

Aides to senior House Republicans said Thursday that committee chairmen were meeting now to decide whether a budget plan … will include parliamentary language, known as reconciliation instructions, that would allow much of a Republican health care plan to pass the filibuster-prone Senate with a simple majority.

—Jonathan Weisman

reconciliatory

ˌre-kən-ˈsil-yə-ˌtȯr-ē 

-ˈsi-lē-ə-

adjective

Examples of reconciliation in a Sentence

Signing the trade agreement was praised as an act of reconciliation between the two countries.

He contacted us in hopes of a reconciliation.

a reconciliation of opposing views

Recent Examples on the Web

The final version of the reconciliation bill emerged after nearly four days of wrangling among Senate Republicans, with the expansive cuts to Medicaid, along with decreases in funding to Medicare, a leading source of contention among lawmakers before making it out of the upper chamber. —James Powel, USA Today, 5 July 2025

Cruz spearheaded an amendment to shoehorn more than $10 billion into the legislation, also known as a reconciliation bill, to save some of those NASA targets. —Richard Tribou, The Orlando Sentinel, 5 July 2025

Eliminating taxes on Social Security under the bill was impossible because of a congressional restriction (dubbed the Byrd Rule after late West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd) that limits what the Senate can include in a reconciliation bill like the Republican budget measure. —Alain Sherter, CBS News, 4 July 2025

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) also accelerated discussions of a second reconciliation bill for fiscal year 2026 in the fall. —Rachel Schilke, The Washington Examiner, 3 July 2025

Word History

Etymology

Middle English reconsiliacioun, from Anglo-French, from Latin reconciliation-, reconciliatio, from reconciliare

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for reconciliation

• acclimatisation
• acclimatization
• acidification
• actualization
• annualization
• autocorrelation
• autoregulation
• beatification
• beneficiation
• biodegradation
• biotransformation
• bureaucratization