dyad
noun/ˈdaɪ.æd/
Etymology From Ancient Greek δυάς (duás), δυάδ- (duád-) from δύο (dúo, “two”), from Proto-Indo-European *duwó, *duwéh₃ (*dwóh₁). The mathematics sense was coined by American scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs in 1884 in the second half of his book Elements of Vector Analysis.
8 senses
- 1A set of two elements treated as one; a pair.
- 2Two persons in an ongoing relationship; a dyadic relationship.
- 3The relationship or interaction itself in reference to a couple.
- 4Any set of two different pitch classes.
- 5An element, atom, or radical having a valence of or…
- 6A chromosome structure, usually X- or V-shaped…
- 7A secondary unit of organisation consisting of an…
- 8A tensor of order two and rank one.
A set of two elements treated as one; a pair.
- […] positing a dyad and constructing the infinite out of great and small, instead of treating the infinite as one, is peculiar to him; […]1908, W. D. Ross, Metaphysics Book I, translation of original by Aristotle:
- McNamee describes their grip on the company as “the most centralized decision-making structure I have ever encountered in a large company.” Their power dyad is possible only because Facebook’s “core platform,” as McNamee puts it, is relatively simple: It “consists of a product and a monetization scheme.”2019 January 29, Tom Bissell, “An Anti-Facebook Manifesto”, in New York Times:
Human sciences, Sciences, Social science, Sociology Two persons in an ongoing relationship; a dyadic relationship.
- For each individual in a specific dyad (i.e., mother-offspring, offspring-father, sibling-sibling), […]2003, Debra Lieberman, John Tooby, Leda Cosmides, The evolution of human incest avoidance mechanisms […] , page 20:
- The southern relationship was a slaveholder-physician dyad, with the slave left outside, unconsulted, uninformed, and with no recourse if she or he was unsatisfied, injured, or killed—a medical nonentity.2008, Harriet A. Washington, “Southern Discomfort”, in Medical Apartheid, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, page 64:
Human sciences, Sciences, Social science, Sociology The relationship or interaction itself in reference to a couple.
Entertainment, Lifestyle, Music Any set of two different pitch classes.
Chemistry, Natural sciences, Physical sciences An element, atom, or radical having a valence of or combining power of two.
Biology, Natural sciences A chromosome structure, usually X- or V-shaped, consisting of two condensed sister chromatids joined by a centromere.
Biology, Natural sciences A secondary unit of organisation consisting of an aggregate of monads.
Mathematics, Sciences A tensor of order two and rank one.
- Derived terms
- dyadic, dyadwise, dyadically, dyadism, pseudodyad
- Related terms
- interval, trichord, hexachord, tetrachord