Etherealization is a term coined by Buckminster Fuller in 1938, in reference to the trend of physical nature towards informational abstraction.

Since then, the term acquired a number of other meanings, similar in general flavor.

In CORBA, it denotes the act of destroying the association between a CORBA object and its servant (CORBA), after which the object continues to virtually exist, but cannot process any requests. The opposite action is incarnation (CORBA).