Dictionary Definition
similar adj
1 marked by correspondence or resemblance;
"similar food at similar prices"; "problems similar to mine"; "they
wore similar coats" [ant: dissimilar]
2 having the same or similar characteristics;
"all politicians are alike"; "they looked utterly alike"; "friends
are generaly alike in background and taste" [syn: alike(p), like] [ant: unalike]
3 resembling or similar; having the same or some
of the same characteristics; often used in combination; "suits of
like design"; "a limited circle of like minds"; "members of the cat
family have like dispositions"; "as like as two peas in a pod";
"doglike devotion"; "a dreamlike quality" [syn: like] [ant: unlike]
4 (of words) expressing closely related
meanings
5 capable of replacing or changing places with
something else; "interchangeable parts" [syn: exchangeable, interchangeable,
standardized,
standardised]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Etymology
From similaire.Adjective
- Having traits or characteristics in common; alike, comparable.
- of triangles, etc., having corresponding angles equal and corresponding line segments proportional (the same shape, but possibly different size).
Related terms
Translations
- Arabic:
- Chinese: 類似, 类似 (lèisì)
- Czech: podobný
- Dutch: gelijkend
- Finnish: samanlainen
- French: similaire
- German: ähnlich
- Hungarian: hasonló
- Italian: simile
- Japanese: 似ている (nite iru)
- Korean: 비슷한 (biseuthan)
- Portuguese: semelhante, similar
- Russian: подобный (podóbnyj)
- Spanish: similar (1), semejante (2)
- Swedish: lik, liknande
Extensive Definition
Similarity is some degree of symmetry in either analogy and resemblance between two or
more concepts or
objects.
The notion of similarity rests either on exact or approximate
repetitions of patterns
in the compared
items. In the case of approximate repetitions we talk about
statistical similarity as found in a fractal and its parts. Finding
similarities or distinguishing between dissimilarities depends on
the faculties of pattern
recognition and disambiguation,
respectively.
A general method to calculate probability of an event
based on another similar event is called relative probability If A, B are
different events Probability of A = P(A) Then P(B) = P(A) x R where
R is the similarity ratio between A,B If A=B --> R=1 If A
R=0
Specific definitions
Different fields provide differing definitions of similarity:- In mathematics,
- In psychology, similarity (psychology)
- In music, Musical similarity
- In chemistry, Chemical similarity
- In engineering, similarity or similitude describe the geometric, kinematic and dynamic 'likeness' of two (or more) systems.
- In computational linguistics, semantic similarity
- In philosophy, similarity is defined as sharing properties or characteristic traits. The sky is similar to the sea, for example, because the sky and the sea both share the property of being blue. This definition has some interesting consequences. First, it follows that resemblance is reflexive, since everything shares its own properties. Second, it follows that resemblance is symmetric, since if x shares properties with y then y shares those same properties with x. Third, qualitative identity turns out to be a limiting case of resemblance, since qualitative identity is defined as sharing all rather than some properties.
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
agnate,
akin, alike, analogical, analogous, aped, approximate, approximating, approximative, be like,
close, collatable, commensurable, commensurate, comparable, comparative, complementary, consimilar, consonant, copied, correlative, correspond to,
corresponding,
counterfeit,
equivalent, ersatz, fake, favoring, following, homogeneous, homologous, identical, imitated, imitation, like, matchable, mimicked, mock, much at one, much the same,
near, nearly reproduced,
nearly the same, not unlike, parallel, phony, proximate, reciprocal, relatable, relative, resemble, resembling, simulated, smacking of,
something like, suggestive of, synthetic, uniform, uniform
with