Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act or process of radiating.
  • noun Emission or propagation of energy in the form of waves or particles.
  • noun Energy radiated or transmitted in the form of waves or particles.
  • noun A stream of particles or electromagnetic waves emitted by the atoms and molecules of a radioactive substance as a result of nuclear decay.
  • noun The act of exposing or the condition of being exposed to such energy.
  • noun The application of such energy, as in medical treatment.
  • noun Anatomy Radial arrangement of parts, as of a group of nerve fibers connecting different areas of the brain.
  • noun Adaptive radiation

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of radiating, or the state of being radiated; specifically, emission and diffusion of rays of light and the so-called rays of heat.
  • noun The divergence or shooting forth of rays from a point or focus.
  • noun In zoology, the structural character of a radiate; the radiate condition, quality, or type; the radiate arrangement of parts. Also radiism.
  • noun In biology: The divergent evolution of several different organisms from a single ancestral form: as, the radiation of the placental mammals.
  • noun A group of organisms that is undergoing divergent modification.
  • noun In psychology, the extension of excitation within the nervous system to give rise to concomitant or secondary sensations.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of radiating, or the state of being radiated; emission and diffusion of rays of light; beamy brightness.
  • noun The shooting forth of anything from a point or surface, like the diverging rays of light.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The shooting forth of anything from a point or surface, like the diverging rays of light; as, the radiation of heat.
  • noun The process of radiating waves or particles.
  • noun The transfer of energy via radiation (as opposed to convection or conduction)
  • noun Radioactive energy

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a radial arrangement of nerve fibers connecting different parts of the brain
  • noun the spread of a group of organisms into new habitats
  • noun syndrome resulting from exposure to ionizing radiation (e.g., exposure to radioactive chemicals or to nuclear explosions); low doses cause diarrhea and nausea and vomiting and sometimes loss of hair; greater exposure can cause sterility and cataracts and some forms of cancer and other diseases; severe exposure can cause death within hours
  • noun the act of spreading outward from a central source
  • noun energy that is radiated or transmitted in the form of rays or waves or particles
  • noun the spontaneous emission of a stream of particles or electromagnetic rays in nuclear decay
  • noun (medicine) the treatment of disease (especially cancer) by exposure to a radioactive substance

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin radiatio.

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Examples

  • The term radiation alone is used commonly for this type of energy, although it actually has a broader meaning. ... light of wave length 570 nm illuminates a diffraction grating. the second-order maximum is at angle 41.5 degre?

    Yahoo! Answers: Latest Questions 2008

  • "[A] Librarian told me that they were forced to take all the literature with the word 'radiation' and put it in [an] archive," Shapiro said.

    Chernobyl Disaster Leads to Advances in Science, Medicine 2011

  • But unless the radiation is at least a couple of orders of magnitude above background, the additional cancers due to radiation are indistinguishable among the cancers due to chemicals, foods, viruses, and ancestry.

    Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » My Personal Experience with Climate Alarmist Spin 2009

  • "[A] Librarian told me that they were forced to take all the literature with the word 'radiation' and put it in [an] archive," Shapiro said.

    Chernobyl Disaster Leads to Advances in Science, Medicine 2011

  • And in this paper, they show something much more striking, and that was that they did what they call a radiation -- and I'm not going to go into the details of it, actually it's quite complicated, but it isn't as complicated as they might make you think it is by the words they use in those papers.

    Kary Mullis on what scientists do 2002

  • This radiation is an afterglow of the violent processes assumed to have occurred in the early stages of the big bang.

    The Nobel Prizes in Physics 1901-2000 2000

  • And in this paper, they show something much more striking, and that was that they did what they call a radiation -- and I'm not going to go into the details of it, actually it's quite complicated, but it isn't as complicated as they might make you think it is by the words they use in those papers.

    Kary Mullis on what scientists do 2002

  • And in this paper, they show something much more striking, and that was that they did what they call a radiation -- and I'm not going to go into the details of it, actually it's quite complicated, but it isn't as complicated as they might make you think it is by the words they use in those papers.

    Kary Mullis on what scientists do 2002

  • One of the hypotheses put forward at the beginning of our research by Pierre Curie and myself consisted in assuming that the radiation is an emission of matter accompanied by a loss in weight of the active substances and that the energy is taken from the substance itself whose evolution is not yet completes and which undergoes an atomic transformation.

    Marie Curie - Nobel Lecture 1966

  • Still, the word "radiation" conjures up a vague sense of impending doom for most people.

    Forbes.com: News Jason Oberholtzer 2011

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