Question: Is there a term that describes the act of giving tangible qualities to an intangible noun?

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> I **stumbled over** a metaphor
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or

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> I felt sadness **condense** on my skin
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The first one might just be "figure of speech", but perhaps there is a more specific name.

Answer: 
The closest word I could find was *personification* which means:

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> [personification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personification) — the attribution of human form or other characteristics to anything other than a human being.
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Its synonym is *anthropomorphism*.

The key difference between the word you seek and *personification* is that you are not strictly describing *human* characteristics. *Personification* isn't strictly human in nature but it does typically refer to characteristics that are related to active beings or people. More strictly:

* Describing a non-human with human terms (e.g. the dog pondered its existence thoughtfully)
* Describing an inanimate object with animate terms (e.g. the sun smiled down on us)

But what you want is a term that refers to an intangible object as if it were tangible. This is very similar to *personification* and I was able to find a few descriptions of *personification* that included such usage. An example:

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> One of the primary uses of personification is in metaphor, **in which something tangible is used to represent something intangible**. By personifying the intangible, it takes on a sort of life in the mind of a reader or listener. A person might describe a bad experience as a nightmare, or like a roller coaster ride. A storm could be described as an angry child throwing a tantrum, yelling and screaming and throwing things about. Death is often personified as the grim reaper, a frightening robed figure carrying a scythe whose job is taking the souls of the dead to the afterlife. — [wiseGEEK](http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-different-uses-of-personification.htm)
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Dictionary definitions do not seem to support this usage but until a more appropriate word enters the English lexicon it is the closest match.

Aside from that, the more generic term would be *metaphor*:

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> [metaphor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor) — a figure of speech that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison, the same as another otherwise unrelated object.
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The word embodiment works well in this case.