Definitions

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

  • noun Biology The occurrence of more than one form, as several alleles of a particular gene or winged and wingless forms of the same species.
  • noun Chemistry Crystallization of a compound in at least two distinct forms.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The property of being polymorphous, or capable of existing in different forms; specifically, in crystallography, the property of crystallizing in two or more fundamental forms: thus, carbon crystallizes in isometric forms in the diamond, and in hexagonal forms in graphite.
  • noun In zoology, difference of form, structure, or type; existence in, or exhibition by, a group of animals, as a species, genus, family, or order, of different types of structure; heterogeneousness.
  • noun In botany, the comprisal of numerous definite or indefinite subtypes under a given type.

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

  • noun (Crystallog.) Same as pleomorphism.
  • noun The capability of assuming different forms; the capability of widely varying in form.
  • noun Existence in many forms; the coexistence, in the same locality, of two or more distinct forms independent of sex, not connected by intermediate gradations, but produced from common parents.

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

  • noun The ability to assume different forms or shapes.
  • noun biology The coexistence, in the same locality, of two or more distinct forms independent of sex, not connected by intermediate gradations, but produced from common parents.
  • noun computer science The feature of object-oriented programming pertaining to the dynamic treatment of data elements based on their type, allowing for an instance of a method to have several definitions.
  • noun mathematics The property of certain typed formal systems of allowing for the use of type variables and binders/quantifiers over those type variables; likewise, the property of certain expressions (within such typed formal systems) of making use of at least one such typed variable.
  • noun crystallography The ability of a solid material to exist in more than one form or crystal structure; pleomorphism.
  • noun genetics The regular existence of two or more different genotypes within a given species or population; also, variability of amino acid sequences within a gene's protein.

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

  • noun (chemistry) the existence of different kinds of crystal of the same chemical compound
  • noun (genetics) the genetic variation within a population that natural selection can operate on
  • noun (biology) the existence of two or more forms of individuals within the same animal species (independent of sex differences)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From poly- + -morphism.

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Examples

  • What we were looking for was what we call a polymorphism—an unusual or abnormal form of a gene—that might prove to be associated with alcoholism.

    Alcohol and The Addictive Brain Kenneth Blum 1991

  • What we were looking for was what we call a polymorphism—an unusual or abnormal form of a gene—that might prove to be associated with alcoholism.

    Alcohol and The Addictive Brain Kenneth Blum 1991

  • In spite of the discovery that angiotensinogen (AGT) gene polymorphism is associated with essential hypertension, the genetics of this disease has remained poorly understood [58].

    The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - Advanced Information 2007

  • This is called polymorphism where a sub-type can be substituted in any situation where a parent type is expected i.e. the object can be treated as an instance of the parent class.

    A Byte of Python Swaroop, C. H. 2003

  • A new word such as polyformism may have to be coined, or an older word polymorphism may have to be invoked, to be set beside polytheism, to provide the corrective.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com Arvind Sharma 2012

  • By contrast, we found that PINK1 containing the G411S polymorphism, which is conserved in vertebrates, but not invertebrates, could compensate for loss of endogenous PINK1, consistent with the view that PINK1 G411S may be a natural variant and not a disease-causing mutation.

    PLoS Biology: New Articles Derek P. Narendra et al. 2010

  • It uses a technique called polymorphism, a mechanism that can use compression and encryption to make the code appear different to antivirus software and more difficult to detect.

    Infoworld News 2009

  • Sure OOP introduced constructs such as polymorphism and interfaces etc to wiggle this, but imperfectly.

    Tooling Around 2006

  • Google also found that legitimate antivirus vendors were having more trouble identifying the fake programs due to an increased level of "polymorphism," a technique used to make an application look unique and evade malware scanners.

    ARN News 2010

  • - meaning "information hiding" in the general sense, and not necessarily a particular programming mechanism such as polymorphism or some such thing.

    WindowsClient.net 2009

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