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Affinity   /əfˈɪnəti/  /əfˈɪnɪti/   Listen
noun
Affinity  n.  (pl. affinities)  
1.
Relationship by marriage (as between a husband and his wife's blood relations, or between a wife and her husband's blood relations); in contradistinction to consanguinity, or relationship by blood; followed by with, to, or between. "Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh."
2.
Kinship generally; close agreement; relation; conformity; resemblance; connection; as, the affinity of sounds, of colors, or of languages. "There is a close affinity between imposture and credulity."
3.
Companionship; acquaintance. (Obs.) "About forty years past, I began a happy affinity with William Cranmer."
4.
(Chem.) That attraction which takes place, at an insensible distance, between the heterogeneous particles of bodies, and unites them to form chemical compounds; chemism; chemical or elective affinity or attraction.
5.
(Nat. Hist.) A relation between species or higher groups dependent on resemblance in the whole plan of structure, and indicating community of origin.
6.
(Spiritualism) A superior spiritual relationship or attraction held to exist sometimes between persons, esp. persons of the opposite sex; also, the man or woman who exerts such psychical or spiritual attraction.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Affinity" Quotes from Famous Books



... the persons to whom we owe offices of kindness or charity, it is obvious that *those related to us by consanguinity or affinity have the first ** claim*. These relations have all the elements of a natural alliance for mutual defence and help; and it is impossible that their essential duties should be faithfully discharged and their fitnesses duly observed, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... English, a nation of Indo- European stock, seem to belong naturally to the movement of Hellenism. But nothing more strongly marks the essential unity of man than the affinities we can [163] perceive, in this point or that, between members of one family of peoples and members of another; and no affinity of this kind is more strongly marked than that likeness in the strength and prominence of the moral fibre, which, notwithstanding immense elements of difference, knits in some special sort the genius and history of us English, and of our American ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... drama of the nation. Accordingly the study of Italian politics, Italian literature, Italian art, is really not the study of one national genius, but of a whole family of cognate geniuses, grouped together, conscious of affinity, obeying the same general conditions, but issuing in markedly divergent characteristics. Democracies, oligarchies, aristocracies spring into being by laws of natural selection within the limits of a single province. Every municipality has a separate nomenclature for its magistracies, a somewhat ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... at least, one of political and religious reaction; and reaction often assumes the aspect of progress, nay, in some cases is identical with progress. Most of the poets, dramatists, and other writers of the Romantic School were, either by affinity or predilection, legitimists and neo-Catholics. Gothic art, mediaeval sentiment, the ancient monarchy and the ancient creed, were blended in their programme with the abrogation of the "unities," and a greater ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... there is no deliberate and steadfast sentiment of that kind. When I reason the matter with myself, I perceive a sort of claim to arise from my poverty and relation to thee on the one hand, and, on the other, from thy merit, thy affinity to her, and her capacity to benefit. Yet I will never supplicate—not meanly supplicate—for an alms. I will not live, nor must thou, when thou art mine, in her house. Whatever she will give thee, money, or furniture, or clothes, receive ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown


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