ALIGNMENT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does alignment mean? 

• ALIGNMENT (noun)
  The noun ALIGNMENT has 4 senses:

1. an organization of people (or countries) involved in a pact or treaty

2. the spatial property possessed by an arrangement or position of things in a straight line or in parallel lines

3. (astronomy) apparent meeting or passing of two or more celestial bodies in the same degree of the zodiac

4. the act of adjusting or aligning the parts of a device in relation to each other

  Familiarity information: ALIGNMENT used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ALIGNMENT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An organization of people (or countries) involved in a pact or treaty

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

alignment; alinement; alliance; coalition

Hypernyms ("alignment" is a kind of...):

organisation; organization (a group of people who work together)

Meronyms (members of "alignment"):

ally (a friendly nation)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "alignment"):

combination (an alliance of people or corporations or countries for a special purpose (formerly to achieve some antisocial end but now for general political or economic purposes))

allies (an alliance of nations joining together to fight a common enemy)

axis; bloc (a group of countries in special alliance)

Allies (in World War I the alliance of Great Britain and France and Russia and all the other nations that became allied with them in opposing the Central Powers)

Central Powers (in World War I the alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary and other nations allied with them in opposing the Allies)

Allies (the alliance of nations that fought the Axis in World War II and which (with subsequent additions) signed the charter of the United Nations in 1945)

Axis (in World War II the alliance of Germany and Italy in 1936 which later included Japan and other nations)

entente; entente cordiale (an informal alliance between countries)

popular front (a leftist coalition organized against a common opponent)

global organization; international organisation; international organization; world organisation; world organization (an international alliance involving many different countries)

Northern Alliance; United Front (a multiethnic alliance in Afghanistan who practice a moderate form of Islam and are united in their opposition to the Taliban)

Antonym:

nonalignment (people (or countries) who are not aligned with other people (or countries) in a pact or treaty)

Derivation:

align (align oneself with a group or a way of thinking)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The spatial property possessed by an arrangement or position of things in a straight line or in parallel lines

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("alignment" is a kind of...):

arrangement; placement (the spatial property of the way in which something is placed)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "alignment"):

true (proper alignment; the property possessed by something that is in correct or proper alignment)

Derivation:

align (place in a line or arrange so as to be parallel or straight)

Sense 3

Meaning:

(astronomy) apparent meeting or passing of two or more celestial bodies in the same degree of the zodiac

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Synonyms:

alignment; conjunction

Hypernyms ("alignment" is a kind of...):

encounter; meeting (a casual or unexpected convergence)

Domain category:

astronomy; uranology (the branch of physics that studies celestial bodies and the universe as a whole)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "alignment"):

inferior conjunction ((astronomy) the alignment of the Earth and a planet on the same side of the sun)

superior conjunction ((astronomy) the alignment of the Earth and a planet on the opposite side of the sun)

Sense 4

Meaning:

The act of adjusting or aligning the parts of a device in relation to each other

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("alignment" is a kind of...):

adjustment; readjustment; registration (the act of adjusting something to match a standard)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "alignment"):

camber (the alignment of the wheels of a motor vehicle closer together at the bottom than at the top)

toe-in (the alignment of the front wheels of a motor vehicle closer together at the front than at the back)

Derivation:

align (bring (components or parts) into proper or desirable coordination correlation)

align (be or come into adjustment with)

 Context examples 

I love that this full moon will be in supreme alignment to Pluto, your ruling planet.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

An abnormal alignment of the knee backwards that is due to a deformity in the knee joint.

(Genu Recurvatum, NCI Thesaurus)

A profile-profile alignment algorithm that make structural predictions using sequence information.

(FFAS Algorithm, NCI Thesaurus)

The repositioning of the fetal head attitude immediately after delivery, returning to a normal position in alignment with the rest of its body.

(Fetal Restitution, NCI Thesaurus)

This allele, which encodes protein CASC5, is involved in both signaling in mitosis and chromosome alignment.

(CASC5 wt Allele, NCI Thesaurus)

The goal is to correct alignment problems, ease pain, and support the body's natural ability to heal itself.

(Chiropractic, NIH: National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine)

A sequence pattern derived from the alignment of multiple sequences that represents the nucleotide or amino acid most likely to occur at each position in a sequence.

(Consensus Sequence, NCI Thesaurus)

The numeric result derived from a BLAST sequence alignment assessment, calculated from the sum of substitution and gap scores.

(BLAST Raw Score, NCI Thesaurus)

The average cell intensity for the sense probe cells used in the grid alignment process.

(Corner Plus, NCI Thesaurus)

A statistical measure timing the movements and proximity of alignment between two different information sets of a series of information.

(Cross-Correlation, NCI Thesaurus)