topologies
|to-pol-o-gies|
🇺🇸
/təˈpɑlədʒiz/
🇬🇧
/təˈpɒlədʒiz/
(topology)
study/description of place or arrangement
Etymology
'topology' originates from Greek, specifically the words 'topos' and 'logia', where 'topos' meant 'place' and 'logia' meant 'study'.
'topology' was formed in modern scientific usage (New Latin/modern Greek compounds) and was adopted into English in the 19th century (the mathematical sense was popularized by mathematicians such as Johann Benedict Listing); the term evolved through scholarly Latin and German usages into the modern English 'topology'.
Initially it meant 'study of place' or descriptions of places/positions, but over time it specialized to mean the mathematical study of properties preserved under continuous deformation and later extended metaphorically to patterns/arrangements such as network topologies.
Meanings by Part of Speech
Noun 1
plural of 'topology': a mathematical structure on a set defined by a collection of open sets satisfying axioms (used to describe concepts like continuity, convergence, and connectedness).
Different topologies on the same set can produce different notions of continuity.
Synonyms
Noun 2
plural of 'topology': the arrangement or pattern of elements in a system (for example, network topologies describing how nodes are connected).
The engineers evaluated several topologies before selecting the most fault-tolerant network design.
Synonyms
Noun 3
plural of 'topology': contexts or domains characterized by particular spatial or relational properties (e.g., biological, geographical, or conceptual topologies).
Researchers compared the social topologies of different communities to understand information flow.
Synonyms
Last updated: 2026/01/12 10:05