Absorbent

Quick meaning: Absorbent is an adjective meaning Having the ability or tendency to absorb; able to soak up liquid easily; absorptive.

Meaning

Having the ability or tendency to absorb; able to soak up liquid easily; absorptive.

More Meanings

1. Anything which absorbs.
2. (physical chemistry) A liquid used in the process of separating gases or volatile liquids, in oil refining.
3. (physiology, pluralized, now rare) The vessels by which the processes of absorption are carried on, as the lymphatics in animals, the extremities of the roots in plants.
4. (medicine) Any substance which absorbs and neutralizes acid fluid in the stomach and bowels, as magnesia, chalk, etc.; also a substance, e.g., iodine, which acts on the absorbent vessels so as to reduce enlarged and indurated parts.

Example Sentences

Those paper towels were amazingly absorbent. That was quite a spill.

In the Southern Ocean the winter is not so excessively cold, but the summer is far less hot, for the clouded sky seldom allows the sun to warm the ocean, itself a bad absorbent of heat: and hence the mean temperature of the year […] is low.

Word Forms

• absorbents

Synonyms for absorbent

Depending on context, synonyms include thirsty, spongy, assimilating, absorptive, absorbefacient, assimilatory.

Antonyms for absorbent

Common opposites include nonabsorbent, nonabsorptive.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include absorptive, hygroscopic, spongy, sorbefacient, absorbefacient, thirsty.

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