electricity
- 1Power supplied by power stations or generators, used to run lights, machines, and other equipment.
The factory relies on electricity to keep its assembly lines moving.
During the blackout, the hospital switched to generators when the electricity failed.
Similarpower
Note
Strictly speaking, power is a rate. A heater that "draws more than a thousand watts" is described by how fast it uses electricity. Everyday English rarely keeps this apart from electricity as energy, which is counted in megawatt-hours over time, and verbs like produce, draw and use fit both. When precision matters, watts point to this sense and watt-hours to the other.
- 2
- 3A physical phenomenon arising from the distribution and movement of charged subatomic particles and their interaction with the electromagnetic field.
The crackle you hear when removing a wool sweater is static electricity discharging.
Electricity arises whenever charged particles accumulate or flow within a material.
Note
The word began by naming a curious behavior rather than a force. Sir Thomas Browne in 1646 defines it as "a power to attract straws or light bodies," the pull that rubbed crystal and amber exert. By James Clerk Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873) it has become something a body is "charged with a certain quantity of." Built from electric plus -ity, it first named the property and later the thing behind it.
- 4The provision of electrical power to homes and businesses as a paid utility service.
Many households saw their electricity costs rise sharply over the winter.
The company supplies electricity to over a million customers across the region.
Similarpower
Note
The industry's word for electricity as something bought, sold and billed. It most often works as a modifier before another noun, as in electricity bosses, electricity bills or electricity costs, where it names the trade rather than the current. A line like "Electricity bosses set to make record profits" treats the supply as a business sector with its own owners and earnings.
- 5A strong feeling of excitement, or a thrill, that can run through a person or a whole crowd.
The moment the band walked on stage, the electricity in the crowd was unmistakable.
A strange electricity ran through the courtroom as the verdict was read.
Similarexcitement, tension, thrill, energy
Note
A metaphor borrowed from the physical force: a crowd or room is charged, and the feeling seems to crackle through it. Writers keep the imagery alive. Tom English's 2016 BBC Sport report has electricity "crackling around Celtic Park" before a ball is kicked. Though usually uncountable, it readily takes "an" when a comparison singles out one occasion, as in "an electricity unlike other openings."
- 6The branch of science that studies electrical phenomena and the behavior of electric charge.
His early experiments contributed much to the science of electricity.
Faraday's work transformed the study of electricity in the nineteenth century.
Note
A field name, used the way physics or optics is: one studies electricity, takes it up in college, or contributes to the science of electricity. Context does the sorting, because the same word names the physical phenomenon itself. "Studying electricity" reads as the subject, while "a quantity of electricity" reads as the thing. Like most subject names, it takes no article and no plural.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from "electric" combined with the suffix "-ity."