polarity

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Intrinsic polar separation, alignment, or orientation, especially of a physical property: magnetic polarity; ionic polarity.
2. n. An indicated polar extreme: an electric terminal with positive polarity.
3. n. The possession or manifestation of two opposing attributes, tendencies, or principles: political polarity.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The having two opposite poles; variation in certain physical properties, so that in one direction they are the opposite of what they are in the opposite direction: thus, a magnet has polarity. Usually, as in electrified or magnetized bodies, these are properties of attraction or repulsion, or the power of taking a certain direction: as, the polarity of the magnet or magnetic needle. (See magnet.) A substance is said to possess magnetic polarity when it possesses poles, as shown by the fact that it attracts one pole of a magnetic needle and repels the other.
2. n. The being attracted to one pole and repelled from the other; attraction of opposites: literal or figurative: as, electricity has polarity.
3. n. The having of an axis with reference to which certain physical properties are determined.
4. n. The having, as a ray, variation of properties in reference to different inclinations to a plane through the ray; polarization.
5. n. That endowment of plants, plant-organs, and even of spores and cells, by virtue of which they tend to develop axially and with a distinction of base and apex; verticibasality. This polarity inheres even in small pieces of a stem in such wise that they tend to throw out roots from the end originally nearest the base and shoots from that farthest from it. Accordingly the basal end of a piece or whole is termed (first by Vochting) the root-pole, the apical end the shoot-pole, the latter also stem-pole (Pfeffer). Polarity is either (relatively) stable, as in flowering plants, or labile (changeable). Some low organisms are apolar.
6. n. In geometry, a conlocal reciprocation in which any two corresponding elements are doubly correlated.

Wiktionary

1. n. The separation, alignment or orientation of something into two opposed poles.
2. n. Either of the two extremes of such attributes.
3. n. chemistry The dipole-dipole intermolecular forces between the slightly positively-charged end of one molecule to the negative end of another or the same molecule.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Physics) That quality or condition of a body in virtue of which it exhibits opposite, or contrasted, properties or powers, in opposite, or contrasted, parts or directions; or a condition giving rise to a contrast of properties corresponding to a contrast of positions
2. n. (Geom.) A property of the conic sections by virtue of which a given point determines a corresponding right line and a given right line determines a corresponding point. See Polar, n.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a relation between two opposite attributes or tendencies
2. n. having an indicated pole (as the distinction between positive and negative electric charges)