atomic

See also: atòmic

English

Etymology

atom + -ic

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) enPR: əˈtŏm.ĭk, IPA(key): /əˈtɒm.ɪk/
  • (General American) enPR: əˈtä.mĭk, IPA(key): /əˈtɑː.mɪk/
  • (file)
  • (General Australian) enPR: əˈtŏm.ĭk, IPA(key): /əˈtɔm.ɪk/
  • Rhymes: -ɒmɪk

Adjective

atomic (not comparable)

  1. (physics, chemistry) Of or relating to atoms; composed of atoms; monatomic.
    Antonym: molecular
    A stream of atomic hydrogen is emitted.
  2. Employing or relating to nuclear energy or processes.
    atomic energy; atomic bombs
    Some nutjob once built a small atomic pile in his back yard.
    • 1955, David J. Dallin, Soviet Espionage, page 495:
      Before the atomic spy Allan Nunn May left Canada to go to London, a treff in London had to be arranged for him and another agent.
  3. Infinitesimally small.
    The hairs on a dust mite are almost atomic.
  4. Unable to be split or made any smaller.
    Synonyms: indivisible, unatomizable
    A bit is an atomic item of data.
    1. (programming, of a commit in a VCS) Containing a single change, as opposed to involving numerous unrelated changes.
    2. (logic, of a proposition) Lacking logical operators; unable to be made simpler in logical form.
  5. (computing, of an operation) Guaranteed to complete either fully or not at all while waiting in a pause, and running synchronously when called by multiple asynchronous threads.
    In order to avoid race conditions, this operation has to be atomic.
    Whenever possible, use atomic types instead of mutexes.
    • 2006, Tim Peierls, Brian Goetz, Joshua Bloch, Joseph Bowbeer, Doug Lea, David Holmes, Java Concurrency in Practice, Pearson Education, →ISBN, page 325:
      It also provides an atomic compareAndSet method (which if successful has the memory effects of both reading and writing a volatile variable) and, for convenience, atomic add, increment, and decrement methods.

Derived terms

Translations

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Noun

atomic (plural atomics)

  1. (computing) An atomic operation.

Anagrams

Occitan

Pronunciation

  • (file)

Adjective

atomic m (feminine singular atomica, masculine plural atomics, feminine plural atomicas)

  1. atomic

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French atomique. By surface analysis, atom + -ic.

Adjective

atomic m or n (feminine singular atomică, masculine plural atomici, feminine and neuter plural atomice)

  1. atomic

Declension

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