Loading page
say it: uh-FIN-uh-tee
affinity is a noun meaning "(immunology) the attraction between an antigen and an antibody". It is pronounced /əˈfɪnəti/ — uh-FIN-uh-tee. It carries 7 recorded senses.
(anthropology) kinship by marriage or adoption; not a blood relationship
anthropology
(biology) state of relationship between organisms or groups of organisms resulting in resemblance in structure or structural parts
“in anatomical structure prehistoric man shows close affinity with modern humans”
biology
the force attracting atoms to each other and binding them together in a molecule
“basic dyes have an affinity for wool and silk”
inherent resemblance between persons or things
a natural attraction or feeling of kinship
“an affinity for politics”
“the mysterious affinity between them”
“James's affinity with Sam”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for affinity come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.