a primitive method of determining a person's guilt or innocence by subjecting the accused person to dangerous or painful tests believed to be under divine control; escape was usually taken as a sign of innocence
a positive feeling of liking; "he had trouble expressing the affection he felt"; "the child won everyone's heart"; "the warmness of his welcome made us feel right at home"
a natural attraction or feeling of kinship; "an affinity for politics"; "the mysterious affinity between them"; "James's affinity with Sam"
inherent resemblance between persons or things
the force attracting atoms to each other and binding them together in a molecule; "basic dyes have an affinity for wool and silk"
(immunology) the attraction between an antigen and an antibody
a close connection marked by community of interests or similarity in nature or character; "found a natural affinity with the immigrants"; "felt a deep kinship with the other students"; "anthropology's kinship with the humanities"
(biology) state of relationship between organisms or groups of organisms resulting in resemblance in structure or structural parts; "in anatomical structure prehistoric man shows close affinity with modern humans"
(anthropology) kinship by marriage or adoption; not a blood relationship
the organic phenomenon in which one of a pair of alleles present in a genotype is expressed in the phenotype and the other allele of the pair is not
the state that exists when one person or group has power over another; "her apparent dominance of her husband was really her attempt to make him pay attention to her"
the act of subjecting to experimental test in order to determine how well something works; "they agreed to end the testing of atomic weapons"
an examination of the characteristics of something; "there are laboratories for commercial testing"; "it involved testing thousands of children for smallpox"