noun

• The act or process of differentiating (generally, without a specialized sense).
• The act of treating one thing as distinct from another, or of creating such a distinction; of separating a class of things into categories; of describing a thing by illustrating how it is different from something else.
• The process of developing distinct components.
• (biology) The process by which the components of multicellular life (cells, organs, etc.) are produced and acquire function, as when a seed develops the root and stem, and the initial stem develops the leaf, branches, and flower buds.
• (biology, evolution) The evolutionary process by which one taxonomic group (species, genus, variety, etc.) becomes distinct from another, or acquires distinct features; the result of such a process: distinctness.
• (geology) The process of separation of cooling magma into various rock types.
• (mathematics, calculus) The process of applying the derivative operator to a function; of calculating a function's derivative.