Permittivities

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A measure of how much electric field is present in a medium, indicating its ability to store electrical energy as an electrostatic field
2. It refers to the characteristic of a material to allow electric field lines to permeate through it, influencing capacitance and wave propagation
3. This term quantifies the relationship between electric displacement and electric field strength in various materials, essential in electromagnetic theory

Etymology: The plural "permittivities" is simply the plural of "permittivity", a noun for a material's capacity to store electric energy in an electric field. Its base is "permittive", formed from the verb "permit" with the adjective-making ending "-ive", meaning something that allows or lets a thing pass through or be held. The electrical sense comes from that older idea of a substance admitting or taking in an electric field. The final piece, "-ity", is a suffix that turns adjectives into abstract nouns meaning a state or quality. It reached English through Old French "-ite" from Latin "-itas", and English later settled on the form "-ity". Adding it to "permittive" gives "permittivity", the quality of being permittive, which the scientific community then adopted as a technical name.