Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Allotropical variation; allotropy.
  • noun The occurrence of more than one form of a chemical element with difference in physical properties is explained, in the light of the atomic theory, as depending on a difference in the number, and possibly in the arrangement, of the atoms which go to make up the molecule. Thus it is believed that in the more common form of oxygen there are two, but in the allotropic ozone three, atoms to the molecule.

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

  • noun (Chem.) The property of existing in two or more conditions which are distinct in their physical or chemical relations.

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

  • noun chemistry The ability (of an element) to exist in more than one physical form without change of state.

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

  • noun the phenomenon of an element existing in two or more physical forms

Etymologies

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Examples

  • It is easy to call these changes by the name allotropism, but not the less do they confound our hasty generalizations.

    Medical Essays, 1842-1882 Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • It is easy to call these changes by the name allotropism, but not the less do they confound our hasty generalizations.

    Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • So, too, some of the alterations met with appear susceptible of no other explanations than that they are reversions to some pre-existing form, or, at any rate, that they are manifestations of a phase of the plant affected different from that which is habitual, and due, as it were, to a sort of allotropism.

    Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants Maxwell T. Masters

  • Other arguments are drawn from chemistry, especially from the facts of isomerism, polymerism, and allotropism.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4: Clandestinity-Diocesan Chancery 1840-1916 1913

  • We do not understand how the peculiar conditions just mentioned conspire to produce the result; but the whole phenomenon seems to be mysteriously connected with ozonized oxygen, and is undoubtedly another phase of that obscure subject, allotropism, to which we alluded in a previous lecture.

    Religion and Chemistry 1880

  • This remarkable phenomenon, which has been fully recognized only of late years, has been called by chemists allotropism, * and the diamond, plumbago, and charcoal are different allotropic modifications of the element carbon.

    Religion and Chemistry 1880

  • These facts of allotropism have some corollaries connected with them rather startling to us of the nineteenth century.

    Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • These facts of allotropism have some corollaries connected with them rather startling to us of the nineteenth century.

    Medical Essays, 1842-1882 Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • Perhaps they have not studied the mystery of allotropism in the emotions of the human heart.

    Elsie Venner Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • Perhaps they have not studied the mystery of allotropism in the emotions of the human heart.

    Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

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