Concentration

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˌkɒn.sənˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/

Definitions

1. The act of focusing one's full attention on a single task or subject, or the amount of a substance present in a mixture
2. The process of directing mental effort towards a specific activity or the ratio of a particular component in a solution
3. The skill of maintaining attention on a designated subject while also describing the strength of a solution's ingredients

Etymology: The word began as a metallurgical term before it described the mind. In 1659, its sense was the extraction or separation of one or more metals present in an alloy, and that technical meaning sat beside an older one: the action of coming together at a single place. The Latin source, "concentrātiō," was formed from "concentrare," to bring to a common centre, built from "com-" (together) and "centrum" (centre), the Latin term that also gave English "centre" itself. The word's ancestry runs through New Latin, the scholarly Latin used by early modern scientists and writers, rather than through the everyday Latin of Roman speakers. Its neighbours in French, Spanish and Italian took shape in the last quarter of the 16th century, suggesting the word spread across European learned vocabulary at around the same time. The mental sense comes from the same root image: gathering scattered things toward one point. A mind that gathers its attention on a single task is doing, in effect, what the early chemists did when they drew one metal out of a mixture.

Synonyms: focus, intensity, attention, dedication, absorption

Antonyms: distraction, diversion, inattention, scatter, diffusion