affinity

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English

Etymology

From Middle English affinite, from Old French affinité. Ostensibly equivalent to affine +‎ -ity.

Pronunciation

Noun

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affinity (countable and uncountable, plural affinities)

  1. A natural attraction or feeling of kinship to a person or thing.
  2. A family relationship through marriage of a relative (e.g. sister-in-law), as opposed to consanguinity (e.g. sister).
  3. A kinsman or kinswoman of a such relationship; one who is affinal.
  4. The fact of and manner in which something is related to another.
    • 1997, Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault, page 67, The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; →ISBN:
      A “signature” was placed on all things by God to indicate their affinities — but it was hidden, hence the search for arcane knowledge. Knowing was guessing and interpreting, not observing or demonstrating.
  5. Any romantic relationship.
  6. A love interest; a paramour.
    • 1916 August, The Electrical Experimenter, New York, page 248, column 3:
      "Cut it short, sis, cut it short," he would growl at her if she started to murmur sweet "coo-coos" to her affinity stationed on the other end of the wire.
  7. Any passionate love for something.
  8. (taxonomy) resemblances between biological populations, suggesting that they have a common origin, type or stock.
  9. (geology) structural resemblances between minerals; resemblances that suggest that they are of a common origin or type.
  10. (chemistry) An attractive force between atoms, or groups of atoms, that contributes towards their forming bonds
  11. (medicine) The attraction between an antibody and an antigen
  12. (computing) tendency to keep a task running on the same processor in a symmetric multiprocessing operating system to reduce the frequency of cache misses
  13. (geometry) An automorphism of affine space.

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Translations

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