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Affinity vs Tropism - What's the difference?

affinity | tropism |

As nouns the difference between affinity and tropism

is that affinity is a natural attraction or feeling of kinship to a person or thing while tropism is (biology) the turning of an organism in response to a stimulus, either towards or away from the stimulus.

affinity

English

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.

    • Derived terms

    * affinity card * affinity fraud * affinity reagent * microaffinity

    tropism

    English

    Noun

    (wikipedia tropism) (en noun)
  • (biology) the turning of an organism in response to a stimulus, either towards or away from the stimulus
  • (virology) viral tropism, or which type of tissue supports a certain virus

    • Usage notes

    Distinguished from (m) in that in a taxis, the organism has (l) and moves towards or away from stimulus (e.g., bacteria, animals), while in a tropism the organism is not (l), and simply turns or grows towards or away from stimulus (e.g., plants, fungi). Similarly, (m) is distinguished as non-directional'' ''movement. In compound terms, analyzed as suffix (m), not stand-alone tropism .

    Derived terms

    See for compounds.

    References

    Anagrams

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