1A spontaneous or natural liking or sympathy for someone or something.

1. 1.1 A similarity of characteristics suggesting a relationship, especially a resemblance in structure between animals, plants, or languages.
   a building with no affinity to contemporary architectural styles

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Shaped by the fastidious Harnoncourt, the central andante movement opens with a horn theme that whispers an affinity to the Largo from the New World symphony.
   • The meta-compound also loses binding specificity and it binds to AT- and GC-rich sequences with similar, relatively low affinities.
   • Many of those are incompletely preserved, and some are decidedly tubular in appearance, calling into question their affinity to the Hyolitha.
   • It seems that the dualistic language has an innate affinity to directive speech acts (in a second-person perspective).
   • In its scale and some of its details Smith's building has an affinity to Richardson's 1875-1876 Hayden Building in Boston.
   • The provenance signature instead suggests that the Sta Series has a closer affinity to the Northern Gneisses and may in a general sense represent a deformed cover sequence.
   • He also suggested that Polyzoniida may have a closer affinity to Glomeridesmida than to the other colobognath taxa.
   • Furthermore, as is typical of many phylogenetic problematica, myzostomids feature a mixture of characteristics that suggest affinities with disparate taxa.
   • All investigated specimens show a remarkable affinity to D. (A.) tyrolensis.
   • Dresser's style was never dictated by dogmatic theories, but had a general affinity to the art of the early English Middle Ages and also suggested his admiration for Asian art.
   • Some authors have suggested a close relationship between cycads and Lyginopteris, but most favor an affinity to Medullosan seed plants.
   • Not surprisingly, we can see an affinity to Warhol's early films in this series of paintings.
   • The researcher suggested a close affinity to Tetraodontiformes, although this idea has not been generally accepted.
   • Nevertheless, ANII-DIN clearly had a higher affinity to the test sequences than ANI-NVS.
   • No fossils in the California Permian collection, other than the ‘hydrozoan’ described here, show a close affinity to Tethyan forms.

   Synonyms

   similarity, resemblance, likeness, kinship
2. 1.2 Relationship, especially by marriage as opposed to blood ties.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • Across the continent there were marked continuities in physical characteristics and cultural features, and many linkages based on relations of kinship, affinity, exchange, and religion.
   • Inter-confessional marriage and inter-confessional aid are expressions of social affinity.
   • These connections reflect ideological, not ethnic, affinity.
   • However, many states only punished relationships between first cousins and closer, and others only punished relationships of consanguinity, but not affinity.
   • They generally feel a kinship and affinity with other types.
   • Use of the same island at the same time and the synchronization of seasonal and annual movements were not directly linked to any social affinity between the two individuals.
   • His recent utterances have shown him to have a more than ethnic affinity with Disraeli; and these are times that demand the Disraelian touch.
   • Early Carboniferous coral faunas of the block have a strong Eurasian affinity, with two recognized coral faunas from two ecological facies having been recognized.
   • There are hints of affinity in the terms used for these partnerships: baere is also romantic partner and kale is a term for spouse.
   • The bulk of local people were from the same Pashtun tribal stock as the Afghans of Kandahar and Jalalabad, and they felt close cultural and tribal affinity with those over the border.
   • Croats also began to look to Serbs and other southern Slavs as people with whom they shared a linguistic and cultural affinity.
   • Yet she is also conscious of her own gypsy blood, of her affinity with these creatures.
   • These might be brief glossaries, grammatical or rhetorical definitions, astronomical diagrams, tables of kindred and affinity, accounts, or tests of penmanship by the apprentice.
   • Related to this notion of communal affinity is ‘social closure’.
   • Peoples with no particular affinity toward each other are bound together in a state that was largely externally created and not the outcome of local political processes.
   • Relational proximity is shaped by cultural affinity and facilitated by spatial and institutional proximity.
3. 1.3Biochemistry The degree to which a substance tends to combine with another.
   the affinity of hemoglobin for oxygen

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Our data do not pose any reason to suspect that we deal with gadolinium complexes of variable valence or that the affinity of binding sites changes with their density or occupancy.
   • Besides the long-range interactions it makes with neighboring protease residues, the binding affinity of a peptide also depends on its own conformation.
   • Several of these results were based on measurements of binding affinities between specific residues in S4 and in the pore domain.
   • In the context of the affinity of hemoglobin for oxygen there are four primary regulators, each of which has a negative impact.
   • When the divalent cation dissociates from actin, the affinity of actin for nucleotide is greatly reduced.