amorphous
adj/əˈmɔ(ɹ)fəs/ · /eɪˈmɔ(ɹ)fəs/
Etymology From Ancient Greek ἄμορφος (ámorphos, “without form, shapeless, deformed”) (itself from ἀ- (a-, “without”) + μορφή (morphḗ, “form”) + -ous. By surface analysis, a- + -morphous.
1
Lacking a definite form or clear shape.
- amorphous blob
- The enormous pile of spaghetti landed on the floor in an amorphous heap.
2
Broadly Being without definite character or nature.
- Gudrun, new from her life in Chelsea and Sussex, shrank cruelly from this amorphous ugliness of a small colliery town in the Midlands. Yet forward she went, through the whole sordid gamut of pettiness, the long amorphous, gritty street.1920 November 9, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter 1, in Women in Love, New York, N.Y.: Privately printed [by Thomas Seltzer] for subscribers only, →OCLC:
- And people talking all the time about the AfD is just what it wants: to foster the impression that the others are ganging up against it. The “authentic” voice of “real people” v the amorphous elite.2023 September 27, John Kampfner, “German politics has a built-in firewall against the far right. It’s beginning to crack”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
3
Broadly Lacking organization or unity.
4
Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Physics In the non-crystalline solid state of, or being a non-crystalline counterpart to, a crystalline solid.
- Near-synonym: noncrystalline
- Glass is an amorphous solid, but some glass is called "crystal" because it looks crystalline and has been called crystal since before humans even understood molecular structure at all.
5
Mathematics, Sciences, Set theory Of a set Infinite and not the disjoint union of two infinite subsets.
- Derived terms
- amorphism, amorphous carbon, amorphously, amorphousness, phosphopeptide-amorphous, polyamorphous
- Hypernyms
- lacking
- Hyponyms
- blobby