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Porous vs Absorbent - What's the difference?

porous | absorbent | Synonyms |

As adjectives the difference between porous and absorbent

is that porous is full of tiny pores that allow fluids or gasses to pass through while absorbent is having the ability or tendency to absorb; able to soak up liquid easily; absorptive.

As a noun absorbent is

anything which absorbs.

porous

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Full of tiny pores that allow fluids or gasses to pass through.
    • Sponges are porous so they can filter water while trapping food.
    Concrete is porous , so water will slowly filter through it.
  • (Of legislation) full of loopholes
  • (figuratively) With many gaps.
  • * {{quote-news
    • , year=2011 , date=May 14 , author=Peter Scrivener , title=Sunderland 1 - 3 Wolverhampton , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=However, Wolves porous defence opened up again to gift Sunderland a foothold in the game - Sessegnon sweeping in a Zenden corner that was inexplicably allowed to bounce in the six-yard box. }}

    Synonyms

    * (full of holes ): permeable

    absorbent

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Having the ability or tendency to absorb; able to soak up liquid easily; absorptive.
    • Those paper towels were amazingly absorbent . That was quite a spill.

    Derived terms

    * absorbent ground * nonabsorbent

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Anything which absorbs.
  • * 1839 , , 1972, Forgotten Books, page 225,
    • In the Southern Ocean the winter is not so excessively cold, but the summer is far less hot, for the clouded sky seldom allows the sun to warm the ocean, itself a bad absorbent of heat: and hence the mean temperature of the year is low.
  • (physiology, pluralized, now, rare) The vessels by which the processes of absorption are carried on, as the lymphatics in animals, the extremities of the roots in plants.
  • (medicine) Any substance which absorbs and neutralizes acid fluid in the stomach and bowels, as magnesia, chalk, etc.; also a substance, e.g., iodine, which acts on the absorbent vessels so as to reduce enlarged and indurated parts.
  • (chemistry) A liquid used in the process of separating gases or volatile liquids, in oil refining.

    • References

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