Definitions

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

  • adjective Biology Having a similar structure or appearance but being of different ancestry.
  • adjective Related by an isomorphism.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In biology:
  • Different in ancestry, but alike in appearance; heterophyletic; convergent.
  • In group-theory, related, as the group Γ to the group G, so that to every substitution g of G corresponds one substitution γ of Γ, and to the product gg ′ of any two substitutions of G corresponds the product γγ′ of the two corresponding substitutions of Γ.
  • Same as isomorphous.
  • In biology, being of the same or like form; morphologically alike; equiformed.

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

  • adjective Isomorphous.
  • adjective (Biol.) Alike in form; exhibiting isomorphism.
  • adjective Of or pertaining to sets related by an isomorphism.

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

  • adjective biology having a similar structure to something that is not related genetically
  • adjective mathematics related by an isomorphism

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

  • adjective having similar appearance but genetically different

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

iso- + -morphic

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Examples

  • Legislation against racist language and behaviour became a model for identifying varieties of harassment and discrimination in the workplace and in the public arena of comment and discussion; pressure has increased for what might be called an 'isomorphic' approach in law to any act or form of words that could be interpreted as stigmatising others or demeaning their human dignity – hence the 'Single Equality' legislation we have seen developed and debated lately.

    Archbishop's lecture - Religious Hatred and Religious Offence 2008

  • Legislation against racist language and behaviour became a model for identifying varieties of harassment and discrimination in the workplace and in the public arena of comment and discussion; pressure has increased for what might be called an 'isomorphic' approach in law to any act or form of words that could be interpreted as stigmatising others or demeaning their human dignity – hence the 'Single Equality' legislation we have seen developed and debated lately.

    Archbishop's lecture - Religious Hatred and Religious Offence 2008

  • I also think there's some potential for using the word 'isomorphic' with regards to simulation, but whatever.

    Believability 2004

  • This is called isomorphic correspondence, and it is "the relationship between the appearance of a visual form and a comparable human behavior" (Luke Wroblewski,

    Boagworld recommends 2009

  • The class of models of a complete theory will be mutually non-isomorphic, but they will nevertheless be elementarily equivalent.

    Archive 2009-06-01 Gordon McCabe 2009

  • (In the case of a complete theory, the models of different cardinality will be elementarily equivalent, even if they are non-isomorphic).

    Archive 2009-06-01 Gordon McCabe 2009

  • Hence, mathematical logic suggests that the application of mathematical physics to the universe as a whole can generate two different types of multiverse: classes of non-isomorphic but elementarily equivalent models; and classes of non-isomorphic and elementarily inequivalent models.

    Archive 2009-06-01 Gordon McCabe 2009

  • Models of different cardinality obviously cannot be isomorphic, hence any theory, complete or incomplete, which has at least one model of infinite cardinality, will have a multiverse associated with.

    Archive 2009-06-01 Gordon McCabe 2009

  • In this case, the models of the theory will be mutually non-isomorphic and elementarily inequivalent.

    Archive 2009-06-01 Gordon McCabe 2009

  • Whilst isomorphic models must be elementarily equivalent, there is no need for elementarily equivalent models to be isomorphic.

    Archive 2009-06-01 Gordon McCabe 2009

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