Shapeshifter vs Polymorphism - What's the difference?
shapeshifter | polymorphism |
(fantasy, mythology) A creature capable of changing its appearance or form at will
* 2000: Glen Cook, Water Sleeps
* 2003: Michael Bathgate, The Fox's Craft in Japanese Religion and Folklore: Shapeshifters, Transformations and Duplicities
* 2004: Devin Grayson, Smallville: City
The ability to assume different forms or shapes.
(biology) The coexistence, in the same locality, of two or more distinct forms independent of sex, not connected by intermediate gradations, but produced from common parents.
(computer science) The feature of object-oriented programming pertaining to the dynamic treatment of data elements based on their type, allowing for an instance of a method to have several definitions. (en)
(mathematics, type theory) The property of certain typed formal systems of allowing for the use of type variables and binders/quantifiers over those type variables; likewise, the property of certain expressions (within such typed formal systems) of making use of at least one such typed variable.
(crystallography) The ability of a solid material to exist in more than one form or crystal structure; pleomorphism.
(genetics) The regular existence of two or more different genotypes within a given species or population; also, variability of amino acid sequences within a gene's protein.
* 1999 , (Matt Ridley), Genome , Harper Perennial 2004, p. 137:
* 2004 , (Richard Dawkins), The Ancestor's Tale , Phoenix 2005, p. 63:
As nouns the difference between shapeshifter and polymorphism
is that shapeshifter is a creature capable of changing its appearance or form at will while polymorphism is the ability to assume different forms or shapes.shapeshifter
English
(Shapeshifting)Noun
(en noun)- The shapeshifter Lisa Bowalk, unable to shed the guise of a black panther, had gone onto the plain as a prisoner but was not now to be found among the dead above or the Captured down below.
- Like the teller of shapeshifter' stories—who conjures a shifting world of perceptions and expectations for his or her audience that is strikingly similar to the worlds created by the ' shapeshifter for its victims—the cultural practice of imagination...is an inherently shifty enterprise....
- There have also been verified reports of fire-starters and ice-makers and a shapeshifter so powerful she was able to frame another Smallville citizen for a bank robbery!
polymorphism
English
(wikipedia polymorphism)Noun
- Since 1990 they have found an entirely new role: they promise understanding of how and why our genes are all so different. They hold the key to human polymorphism .
- Some polymorphisms can be quite stable – so stable that they span the change from an ancestral to a descendant species.