structure

A cohesive whole built up of distinct parts.

Noun

  1. A cohesive whole built up of distinct parts.
    • The birds had built an amazing structure out of sticks and various discarded items.
    • The original family who had begun to build a palace to rival Nonesuch had died out before they had put up little more than the gateway, so that the actual structure which had come down to posterity retained the secret...
    • Built in the 1980s, the country’s Scott Base consists of 12 structures that officials want replaced by three large, interconnected buildings, plus a separate helicopter hangar. - 2019 September 26, Gianluca Mezzofiore,...

    Synonyms: formation

  2. The underlying shape of a solid.
    • He studied the structure of her face.

    Synonyms: formation

  3. The overall form or organization of something.
    • The structure of a sentence.
    • The structure of the society was still a mystery.
    • Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical...

    Synonyms: makeup configuration arrangement composition constitution form structure

  4. A set of rules defining behaviour.
    • For some, the structure of school life was oppressive.
  5. Several pieces of data treated as a unit.
    • This structure contains both date and timezone information.
  6. Underwater terrain or objects (such as a dead tree or a submerged car) that tend to attract fish
    • There's lots of structure to be fished along the west shore of the lake; the impoundment submerged a town there when it was built.
  7. A body, such as a political party, with a cohesive purpose or outlook.
    • The South African leader went off to consult with the structures.
  8. A set along with a collection of finitary functions and relations.

Origin

From Middle French structure, from Latin structūra (“a fitting together, adjustment, building, erection, a building, edifice, structure”), from struere, past participle structus (“pile up, arrange, assemble, build”). Compare construct, instruct, destroy, etc.

Forms

structures

Derived

accessory gonadal structure aerostructure algebraic structure antistructure apostructure ball-and-pillow structure bandstructure band structure biostructure bone structure capital structure chemical structure control structure costructure cyberstructure cytostructure data structure deep structure destructure differential structure dramatic structure echostructure eigenstructure endostructure

Verb

  1. To give structure to; to arrange.
    • I'm trying to structure my time better so I'm not always late.
    • I've structured the deal to limit the amount of money we can lose.
    • Next, let’s structure (42c) The girl walked. The verb walked is like slept: an intransitive verb V₀. Its dependent is a subject noun, girl. The noun girl has as its dependent the determiner the, […] - 2025, Edward A. F....

Forms

structures structuring structured

Related

infrastructure macrostructure microstructure restructure structural structuralism structuralist structured substructure superstructure unstructured

Derived

data-structured coupling log-structured permission structure self-structured structured illumination structured illumination microscopy