Noun

(wikipedia affinity) (affinities)

A natural attraction or feeling of kinship to a person or thing.

A family relationship through marriage of a relative (e.g. sister-in-law), as opposed to consanguinity. (e.g. sister).

A kinsman or kinswoman of such relationship. Affinal kinsman or kinswoman.

The fact of and manner in which something is related to another.

* 1997 , Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault'', page 67, ''The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; ISBN 1840460865):

A “signature” was placed on all things by God to indicate their affinities' — but it was hidden, hence the search for arcane knowledge. Knowing was '''guessing''' and ' interpreting , not observing or demonstrating.

Any romantic relationship.

Any passionate love for something.

(taxonomy) resemblances between biological populations; resemblances that suggest that they are of a common origin, type or stock.

(geology) structural resemblances between minerals; resemblances that suggest that they are of a common origin or type.

(chemistry) An attractive force between atoms, or groups of atoms, that contributes towards their forming bonds

(medicine) The attraction between an antibody and an antigen

(computing) tendency to keep a task running on the same processor in a symmetric multiprocessing operating system to reduce the frequency of cache misses

(geometry) An automorphism of affine space.

Noun

(uncountable) The state of being hostile.

*, II.12:

There is no hostilitie so excellent, as that which is absolutely Christian.

* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=October 1, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC Sport

, title= Everton 0-2 Liverpool , passage=But with Goodison Park openly directing its full hostility towards Atkinson, Liverpool went ahead when Carroll turned in his first Premier League goal of the season after 70 minutes.}}

* 2013 September 28, (Kenan Malik), " London Is Special, but Not That Special," New York Times (retrieved 28 September 2013):

The polarization of wealth and the polarization of attitudes to diversity are not unrelated. A key reason for popular hostility to immigrants is that to many people, particularly within working-class communities, immigration has become a symbol of unacceptable change.

(countable) A hostile action, especially a military action. See hostilities for specific plural definition.