ubiquitous
adjUK /juːˈbɪkwɪtəs/ · CA, US /juˈbɪkwɪtəs/
Etymology From ubiquity + -ous, from Medieval Latin ubīquitās, from Latin ubīque (“everywhere”), from ubī̆ (“where”) + -que (“each, ever”). Compare ubiety.
1
Being everywhere at once: omnipresent.
- In Christianity, Hinduism, and Judaism, God is ubiquitous.
2
Appearing to be everywhere at once; being or seeming to be in more than one location at the same time.
- One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming to be linked with the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined, was the unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “’’Moby Dick’’, Chapter 41”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
- There is much sad evidence, too, of the spoliation and dereliction of vanished industry: tips, slag-heaps and derelict colliery-screens among which the ubiquitous, nomad mountain sheep graze unconcernedly.1955 July, D. S. Barrie, “Railways of the Bridgend District”, in Railway Magazine, page 449:
1 more example
- This deed accomplished, life no longer suffers hopelessly under the terrible mutilations of ubiquitous disaster, battered by time, hideous throughout space; but with its horror visible still, its cries of anguish still tumultuous, it becomes penetrated by an all-suffusing, all-sustaining love, and a knowledge of its own unconquered power.1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 29:
3
Widespread; very prevalent.
- Derived terms
- nonubiquitous, ubiquitous computing, ubiquitously, ubiquitousness, unubiquitous
- Related terms
- ubiquarian, ubiquitarian, ubiquitary, ubiquiter, ubiquitin, ubiquitinate, ubiquitist, ubiquity