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chaos - 7 dictionary results

cha⋅os

  [key-os]
Use chaos in a Sentence
–noun
1. a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order.
2. any confused, disorderly mass: a chaos of meaningless phrases.
3. the infinity of space or formless matter supposed to have preceded the existence of the ordered universe.
4. (initial capital letter) the personification of this in any of several ancient Greek myths.
5. Obsolete. a chasm or abyss.
Origin:
1400–50; late ME < L < Gk; akin to chasm, yawn, gape

Synonyms:
1. disarray, jumble, turmoil, tumult.

Antonyms:
1. order, peace, calm.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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cha·os   (kā'ŏs')   
n.  
  1. A condition or place of great disorder or confusion.
  2. A disorderly mass; a jumble: The desk was a chaos of papers and unopened letters.
  3. often Chaos The disordered state of unformed matter and infinite space supposed in some cosmogonic views to have existed before the ordered universe.
  4. Mathematics A dynamical system that has a sensitive dependence on its initial conditions.
  5. Obsolete An abyss; a chasm.

[Middle English, formless primordial space, from Latin, from Greek khaos.]
cha·ot'ic (-ŏt'ĭk) adj., cha·ot'i·cal·ly adv.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Chaos

Cha"os\ (k[=a]"[o^]s), n. [L. chaos chaos (in senses 1 & 2), Gr. cha`os, fr. cha`inein (root cha) to yawn, to gape, to open widely. Cf. Chasm.]

1. An empty, immeasurable space; a yawning chasm. [Archaic]

Between us and there is fixed a great chaos. --Luke xvi. 26 (Rhemish Trans.).

2. The confused, unorganized condition or mass of matter before the creation of distinct and orderly forms.

3. Any confused or disordered collection or state of things; a confused mixture; confusion; disorder.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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Language Translation for : chaos
Spanish: caos,
German: das Chaos,
Japanese: 混沌
More Translations »

chaos

A new branch of science that deals with systems whose evolution depends very sensitively upon the initial conditions. Turbulent flows of fluids (such as white water in a river) and the prediction of the weather are two areas where chaos theory has been applied with some success.

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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chaos 
c.1440, "gaping void," from L. chaos, from Gk. khaos "abyss, that which gapes wide open, is vast and empty," from *khnwos, from PIE base *gheu-, *gh(e)i- "to gape" (cf. Gk khaino "I yawn," O.E. ginian, O.N. ginnunga-gap; see yawn). Meaning "utter confusion" (1606) is extended from theological use of chaos for "the void at the beginning of creation" in Vulgate version of Genesis. The Gk. for "disorder" was tarakhe, however the use of chaos here was rooted in Hesiod ("Theogony"), who describes khaos as the primeval emptiness of the Universe, begetter of Erebus and Nyx ("Night"), and in Ovid ("Metamorphoses"), who opposes Khaos to Kosmos, "the ordered Universe." Chaotic is from 1713.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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chaos   (kā'ŏs')  Pronunciation Key 
The behavior of systems that follow deterministic laws but appear random and unpredictable. Chaotic systems very are sensitive to initial conditions; small changes in those conditions can lead to quite different outcomes. One example of chaotic behavior is the flow of air in conditions of turbulence. See more at fractal.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
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chaos mathematics
A property of some non-linear dynamic systems which exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions. This means that there are initial states which evolve within some finite time to states whose separation in one or more dimensions of state space depends, in an average sense, exponentially on their initial separation.
Such systems may still be completely deterministic in that any future state of the system depends only on the initial conditions and the equations describing the change of the system with time. It may, however, require arbitrarily high precision to actually calculate a future state to within some finite precision.
["On defining chaos", R. Glynn Holt and D. Lynn Holt . (ftp://mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/ippe/preprints/Phil_of_Science/Holt_and_Holt.On_Defining_Chaos)]
Fixed precision floating-point arithmetic, as used by most computers, may actually introduce chaotic dependence on initial conditions due to the accumulation of rounding errors (which constitutes a non-linear system).
(1995-02-07)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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