| 释义 |
unitary, a.|ˈjuːnɪtərɪ|
[f. unit n. or unit-y1 + -ary1. Cf. F. unitaire n. and a., It. unitario n., f. mod.L. unitari-us Unitarian.]
1. Cryst. (See quot.)
1816R. Jameson Char. Min. (ed. 2) 211 A crystal is named Unitary, when it experiences only a single decrement by one row.
2. a. Of or pertaining to, characterized by, based upon, or directed towards, unity.
1847Tait's Mag. XIV. 560 The parcelled and the associative systems... With the latter the economies of unitary habitation..might be obtained. 1871Lowell Study Wind. (1886) 221 The national and unitary tendencies of the people. 1893Contemp. Rev. 799 The unitary movement in the latter country [sc. Italy].
b. Philos. Of or pertaining to, proceeding from, involving, unity of being or existence. Also absol.
a1842Channing Perfect Life (1888) 64 Man loves the Universal, the Unchangeable, the Unitary. 1885J. Martineau Types Eth. Th. I. 86 Every attempt at unitary deduction of a universe by predicamental logic. 1893C. B. Upton Bases Relig. Belief 298 A unity of substance which..connects every part with the unitary life of the whole.
3. a. Of the nature of a unit; having the separate existence or individual character of a unit. Of sounds: Simple, uncompounded.
1861Lowell E Pluribus Unum Pr. Wks. 1890 V. 49 The United States are not a German Confederation, but a unitary and indivisible nation. 1875Whitney Life Lang. iv. 56 We have altered their original unitary sounds. 1881Huxley in Nature XXIV. 345 An indivisible unitary archæus dominating..the parts of the organism.
b. Philos. Of being or personality.
1865J. Grote Explor. Philos. i. 88 Whether..we are to be considered as having a locally distributable, or on the other hand concentrated and unitary, feeling self. 1886Encycl. Brit. XXI. 379/1 Indirect proofs of a universe of pure and unitary Being. a1901F. W. H. Myers Human Personality (1903) I. p. xxvi, Each man is at once profoundly unitary and almost infinitely composite.
c. Serving as a unit of measurement or calculation.
1889Sci. Amer. LX. 304/1 A wind pressure of 1,200 pounds for the same unitary distance is allowed for.
4. a. Of or pertaining to a unit or units; esp. in Chem., and spec. as denominating a theory or system in which the molecules of all bodies are regarded as units.
1865Mansfield Salts 137 The unitary theory of the substitution of the two halves of the hydrogen of water. 1867Bloxam Chem. Index 675 Unitary definitions, 256. 1880E. Cleminshaw Wurtz' Atomic Theory 84 This was at that time—perhaps improperly—called the unitary system.
b. Of an alphabet, etc.: Consisting or composed of single letters or symbols for each sound.
1874Ellis Eng. Pronunciation iv. 1338 His ‘unitary’ arrangement. Ibid. 1339 Professor Whitney's Unitary Alphabet.
c. Arith. A modification of the ‘rule of three,’ by which, the value, extent, etc., of one unit being first determined, that of any number is found by multiplication.
1877J. Hamblin Smith Arithmetic 164 The Unitary Method..is rapidly displacing the Rule of Three. 1908Hall & Stevens School Arith. 135 The process is known as Reduction to the Unit, or the Unitary Method.
d. Math. and Physics. Applied to mathematical entities that in some specific way are described by or related to a unitary matrix, one which when multiplied by the transpose of its complex conjugate gives the unit matrix; unitary group, the group of all square unitary matrices of a given size; unitary symmetry, the symmetry of a unimodular unitary group as used to relate the properties of different sub-atomic particles.
1908H. Hilton Introd. Theory Groups Finite Order iii. 16 The substitution A is called..unitary if AA′ = 1. 1935P. A. M. Dirac Princ. Quantum Mech. (ed. 2) v. 111 We can now see that a unitary transformation transforms observables into observables. 1937Physical Rev. LI. 109/2 The representations of the four-dimensional unitary group will characterize the multiplet systems. 1941Birkhoff & MacLane Survey Mod. Algebra ix. 255 One may adopt the properties of linearity, skew-symmetry, and positiveness as the postulates for an inner product..in an abstract vector space over the complex numbers; the space is then called a unitary space. Ibid., A linear transformation T of the space is unitary if it preserves lengths {vb}ξT{vb} = {vb}ξ{vb}. 1961M. Gell-Mann in Gell-Mann & Ne'eman Eightfold Way (1964) i. 12 We attempt..to treat the eight known baryons as a supermultiplet, degenerate in the limit of a certain symmetry but split into isotopic spin multiplets by a symmetry-breaking term... The symmetry is called unitary symmetry and corresponds to the ‘unitary group’ in three dimensions in the same way that charge independence corresponds to the ‘unitary group’ in two dimensions. 1969[see Lie]. 1975Physics Bull. Apr. 176/2 Strong interactions among nucleons are invariant under a group of unitary symmetry transformation which changes protons into neutrons and vice versa—the group SU(2). 1979Cheng & O'Neill Elementary Particle Physics xiii. 275 The mathematical groups on which elementary particle physicists have concentrated most of their attention are..continuous groups described by matrices U that are unitary: U† U = 1.
5. Forming a unit with something.
1868Lowell Among my Bks. Ser. i. Wks. 1890 III. 26 [Shakespeare] seems in some strange way unitary with human nature itself.
6. Special collocations: unitary taxation (U.S.), a system of taxation by which a company or business is taxed on a proportion of its worldwide earnings, and not just on those made within the jurisdiction of the taxation authority (i.e. a State government); also unitary tax.
1977Washington Post 14 Aug. a8/4 Brown is moving to alleviate concerns of multinational companies over the state's ‘unitary tax’. 1979Economist 7 July 91/2 Unitary taxation (purists call it combined or consolidated income reporting)..hits a company not on profits made in a given state but on a percentage of the parent's total (multi-state or world-wide) income. 1984Miami Herald 6 Apr. 22a/3 When the governor crawfishes out of his ill-advised unitary tax (his great tax-reform promise), the greedy ones might try to increase property taxes again.
Hence ˈunitarily adv., in a unitary manner; ˈunitariness, uniˈtarity, the property of being unitary.
1865J. Grote Moral Ideals (1876) 27 [Must not] the plant..have..a sort of feeling to the extent of its unitariness of organization? 1924N.E.D. s.v. unitary a., Unitarily. 1932Amer. Jrnl. Math. LIV. 149 Similar unitary matrices are..always unitarily equivalent. 1959Nuovo Cimento XIII. 354 The unitarity of the S-matrix implies that it can be written in terms of a hermitian matrix A in the form S = [etc.]. 1969Nature 24 May 720/1 SU2 and SU3..are simple unitary symmetries in which the unitarity ensures that a set of possibilities has unit probability. 1979J. C. Polkinghorne Particle Play vi. 88 S-matrix theory played a valuable role in highlighting certain general properties (unitarity, crossing, analyticity) which are important aspects of relativistic quantum mechanics.
▸ Polit. Of or relating to a system of government or administration in which the powers of the separate constituent parts are vested in a central body, as opposed to two or more tiers of jurisdiction, authority, or responsibility. In later use also (chiefly Brit.): spec. designating or relating to a single level of local government within an area, esp. as a replacement for a two-tier system of local councils; usu. in unitary authority, unitary council.
1900N.Y. Times 27 Dec. 5/5 The various sections into which the Cuban Constitutional Convention was divided some weeks ago..are gradually getting together on the basis of a unitary Government, which restricted suffrage. 1908Proc. Amer. Polit. Sci. Assoc. 5 37 (note) The term federal government is not used in contrast to state government, but as indicating the general system of divided jurisdiction existing in such countries as the United States or Canada, in contradistinction to the unitary governments of the United Kingdom and France. 1936R. C. K. Ensor England, 1870–1914 ix. 296 A special effect of the County Councils Act was that London acquired for the first time since its vast modern expansion a popularly elected unitary authority in the shape of the L.C.C. 1969Rep. Royal Comm. Local Govt. I. vi. 73, in Parl. Papers 1968–9 ((Cmd. 4040)) XXXVIII. 29 We would combine responsibility for all services in a single authority for each area. We call such areas unitary and the authorities responsible for them unitary authorities. 1969Daily Tel. 12 June 23 (caption) The proposed eight new provincial regions and the 61 huge unitary councils recommended by the Royal Commission. 1981K. Abercrombie Rural Devel. Lewis & Harris (BNC) 10 The WIIC [= Western Isles Islands Council] is a unitary authority, responsible for most local services, which elsewhere in the United Kingdom are divided between two separate tiers of local government. 1997Press (Christchurch, N.Z.) (Nexis) 27 June 5 The possibility of replacing the Canterbury Regional Council with a unitary authority should be explored. |