capillary action

1. 1.

   a phenomenon associated with surface tension and resulting in the elevation or depression of liquids in capillaries

   Synonymscapillarity

   Broadersurface tension

Questions about capillary action

What does capillary action mean?

capillary action means "a phenomenon associated with surface tension and resulting in the elevation or depression of liquids in capillaries".

What is another word for capillary action?

Close synonyms include capillarity. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is capillary action a common word?

capillary action is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.