polytomyn.
/pəˈlɪtəmi/, U.S. /pəˈlɪdəmi/ 1. Logic and Statistics. A division or classification into several (usually more than three) groups or subsets; (in later use also) the assignment of three or more possible values to a categorical variable.
ΘΚΠ
the world > relative properties > number > plurality > [noun] > division into several parts
polytomy1819
multisection1862
polychotomy1887
the mind > mental capacity > philosophy > logic > logical classification > [noun] > process of division
polytomy1819
fundamentum divisionis1849
the mind > mental capacity > philosophy > logic > logical classification > [noun] > a division, group, or class > division into several groups
polytomy1819
1819 J. Richardson tr. I. Kant Logic 209 (heading) Dichotomy and polytomy.
a1856 W. Hamilton Lect. Metaphysics (1860) IV. xxv. 23 If a division has only two members, it is called a dichotomy..; if three, a trichotomy..; if four, a tetrachotomy; if many, a polytomy, &c.
1881 J. Venn Symbolic Logic xvii. 350 In place of the old dichotomy we have substituted a system of polytomy; that is, we divide the universe of things into all the ultimate subdivisions attainable by taking every term and its contradictory into account.
1945 J. R. Kantor Psychol. & Logic II. xx. 194 The principle of noncontradiction can not apply to polytomy because that type of division involves perception of objects.
1954 Jrnl. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 49 735 We are more interested here in measures of association suitable for use with any numbers of classes in the polytomies or classifications.
1965 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. 71 300/1 For each variable there is an underlying order among the categories of the polytomy.
1978 E. Chargaff Heraclitean Fire iii. 168 Each of these processes has contributed to the polytomy, the fearful fragmentation, of our vision of nature.
1996 Ann. Rev. Sociol. 22 364 In a two-way table having one ordered and one unordered polytomy, partitioning the association and constraining the ordered variable to have linear effects enable us to offer a simple description of it.
2. Biology and Taxonomy. Division into more than two branches at the same point or node; the occurrence of such branching.
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1875 A. W. Bennett & W. T. T. Dyer tr. J. von Sachs Text-bk. Bot. 148 Dichotomy (rarely Polytomy)..is caused by the cessation of the previous increase in length of a member at the apex, and by two (or more) new apices arising at the apical surface close to one another, which..develope in diverging directions.
1979 Systematic Zool. 28 321/2 A convention which clearly differentiates a list of taxa forming a series of dichotomies from a list of taxa arranged as a multiple furcation (a polytomy) from the same node.
2002 S. J. Gould Struct. Evolutionary Theory i. 77 Extensive polytomy in cladistic models may arise not only..from insufficient data to resolve a sequence of close dichotomies, but also as the expectation of punctuated equilibrium for successive branching of daughter species from an unchanged parental form in stasis.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2006; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1819