polarity
/pə(ʊ)ˈlarɪti
/noun (plural polarities) [mass noun]
1The property of having poles or being polar: it exhibits polarity when presented to a magnetic needle...
- However, none of these techniques provide information about the dynamics and the molecular properties such as polarity and viscosity of the immediate microenvironment of the peptide.
- Despite the functional diversity among helicases, they all exhibit specific polarity, which is the intrinsic property of all the helicases.
- In principle, properties such as tube polarity, local hydrophilicity, and rigidity would be controlled by means of incorporating functional groups into the synthetic channel.
1.1The relative orientation of poles; the direction of a magnetic or electric field: the magnetic field peaks in strength immediately after switching polarity [count noun]: sunspots can be classified according to their magnetic field polarities...
- When the burst of electrical current ends the magnetic field reverses polarity.
- In a floppy disc, for example, you can store ones and zeros by exposing the ferromagnetic surface of the disc to magnets with different polarities (polarity refers to the orientation of the north and south poles of the magnet).
- Pigeons released with an earth strength magnetic field around their heads vanish in slightly different directions depending on the polarity of the magnetic field.
1.2The state of having two opposite or contradictory tendencies, opinions, or aspects: the polarity between male and female [count noun]: the Cold War’s neat polarities can hardly be carried on...
- You can access your deep understanding, application, and synthetical abilities dealing with the concept of paradox, polarity, and opposition.
- It's a difficult thing to be modern in the field of performing arts in India, because in our context there's no sense of polarity or binary opposition.
- First is the duality obvious in all of Carter's work: polarity of opinion, love/hate, but also the contrast between the decorative and the practical in her work, the imprecise and the rigorous.
Synonyms
difference, separation, opposition, contradiction, contradictoriness, antithesis, duality, antagonism, conflict, dichotomy
rare contrariety, antonymy
1.3 Biology The tendency of living organisms or parts to develop with distinct anterior and posterior (or uppermost and lowermost) ends, or to grow or orientate in a particular direction: the sponge, possessing an axis of polarity, carries an incurrent siphon at one end and an excurrent siphon at the other the embryo shows polarity: it has a root pole and a shoot pole...
- Tissue polarity is functional as organisms have sensory receptors to detect mechanical and thermal stimuli from the environment.
- In this mutant, the anterior region of each segment is duplicated in mirror-image polarity, and the posterior region is lost.
- As usual with cladistic analyses, the vast majority of anatomical traits are scored as a present-absent polarity in each organism.
