affordancen.
/əˈfɔːdəns/, U.S. /əˈfɔrdəns/ 1. English regional (Cumberland). The amount a person can afford to pay. Now rare.
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1879 W. Dickinson Gloss. Words & Phrases Cumberland (ed. 2) Suppl. 123 Affwordance, ability to bear some expence.
1896 W. Kewley in Eng. Dial. Dict. I. 19/2 [Cumberland] It's beyond my affordance.
2. Psychology. A property of an object or an aspect of the environment, esp. relating to its potential utility, which can be inferred from visual or other perceptual signals; (more generally) a quality or utility which is readily apparent or available.
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1966 J. J. Gibson Senses considered as Perceptual Systems xiii. 285 When the constant properties of constant objects are perceived (the shape, size, color..[etc.]), the observer can go on to detect their affordances. I have coined this word as a substitute for values, a term which carries an old burden of philosophical meaning. I mean simply what things furnish, for good or ill.
1978 Science 10 Mar. 1060/3 Gibson..asserts that there are correspondences between a visual perception and an object's characteristics (‘affordances’). Thus, if there is optical information that a surface is rigid, flat, level, and extended, then the surface affords ‘sit-on-ableness’.
1997 Brit. Jrnl. Philos. Sci. 48 599 An organism that can track an affordance only through a single, specific cue is very limited in its ability to use feedback to control and modulate its behaviour, for it is restricted to reliance on variation over time in that single cue.
2002 New Yorker 25 Mar. 93/1 Digital documents..have their own affordances. They can be easily searched, shared, stored, accessed remotely... But they lack the affordances that really matter to a group of people working together.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2012; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1879