rationalization

/ˌræʃənələˈzeɪʃən/
noun
  1. The act of trying to explain or justify behavior or an attitude with logical reasons, even if those are not the real reasons.
    • His rationalization for being late was that traffic was terrible, but really he just overslept.
    • She used a clever rationalization to avoid admitting she had made a mistake.
    • The company's rationalization of the layoffs as 'restructuring' didn't fool the employees.
  2. The process of making a system, organization, or activity more efficient by removing unnecessary parts or simplifying it.
    • The rationalization of the factory's production line saved the company millions of dollars.
    • The government announced a rationalization of the tax code to make it easier to understand.
    • After the merger, the rationalization of the two departments led to many job cuts.
  3. In mathematics, the process of eliminating radicals or irrational numbers from the denominator of a fraction.
    • The teacher explained that rationalization makes calculations simpler.
    • Rationalization of the fraction 1/√2 gives you √2/2.
    • In algebra class, we learned the rationalization of denominators with square roots.
Antonyms