atomic

Of or relating to atoms; composed of atoms; monatomic.

Adjective

  1. Of or relating to atoms; composed of atoms; monatomic.
    • A stream of atomic hydrogen is emitted.

    Antonyms: molecular

  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.
    • 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. - 1955, David J. Dallin, Soviet Espionage, page 495:

    1. (colloquial, by extension) Very strong and overpowering.

      Synonyms: nuclear

  3. Infinitesimally small.
    • The hairs on a dust mite are almost atomic.
  4. Unable to be split or made any smaller.
    • A bit is an atomic item of data.

    Synonyms: discrete indivisible unatomizable

    1. (programming, of a commit in a VCS) Containing a single change, as opposed to involving numerous unrelated changes.

      Synonyms: discrete indivisible unatomizable

    2. (logic, of a proposition) Lacking logical operators; unable to be made simpler in logical form.

      Synonyms: discrete indivisible unatomizable

    3. (order theory, of a partially ordered set with a least element 0) Such that for every element b>0 there exists an atom a such that b≥a>0.

      Synonyms: discrete indivisible unatomizable

  5. 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.
    • 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. - 2006,...

Origin

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Hellenic *ə- Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-) Proto-Indo-European *temh₁- Proto-Indo-European *-né- Ancient Greek τέμνω (témnō) Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Hellenic *-ós ▲ Ancient Greek -ος (-os)influ. Ancient Greek -ός (-ós) Ancient Greek *τομός (*tomós) Ancient Greek ἄτομος (átomos)bor. Latin atomusbor. Middle French athomebor. Middle English attome English atom Proto-Indo-European *-ikos Proto-Italic *-ikos Latin -icuslbor. Old French -iquebor. Middle English -ik English -ic English atomic From atom + -ic.

Derived

antiatomic atomic absorption spectroscopy atomic age atomically atomic authorization atomic battery atomic bomb atomic buffalo turd atomic charge atomic clock atomic cocktail atomic emission spectroscopy atomic energy atomic F-bomb atomic fission atomic football atomic force microscope atomic force microscopy atomic forensics atomic formula atomic fusion atomic garden atomic gardening atomician

Noun

  1. An atomic operation.

Forms

atomics