unity
Pluralunities (some meanings)
- 1The quality of forming a single, undivided whole, as a well-made novel or a united empire does.
Critics praised the novel's unity, noting that no scene felt detached from the whole.
The reforms threatened the unity of the empire, which soon fractured into rival states.
Similaroneness, wholeness, coherence, cohesion, integrity
Oppositedisunity, division, fragmentation
Note
The core sense, where the root shows through most plainly. Middle English unite comes from Latin ūnitās, built on ūnus, "one", so it is distantly the same word as one and an. Here it is uncountable, a quality rather than a thing. Poe's The Philosophy of Composition (1846) prizes "unity of impression", the effect a work loses when it cannot be read at one sitting.
- 2A state of agreement or harmony between people or groups.
The senator called for unity across party lines on the disaster relief bill.
Years of disputes over grazing rights had eroded any unity among the villages.
Similarharmony, solidarity, agreement, accord, consensus
Oppositedisunity, discord, division, disagreement
- 3A single, complete whole, regarded as self-contained rather than as a collection of parts.
In her philosophy, the self is not a bundle of impressions but a genuine unity.
The architect conceived the house and its garden as one unity rather than two separate projects.
Note
Here the word takes an article: a unity is a thing, not a condition. Joyce Crick's 1999 translation of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams uses it for German Einheit, saying the dream "obeys a compulsion to form a unity" out of separate experiences. The test is the article. If you can say a unity or unities, you mean the whole that results, not the state of oneness itself.
- 4The number one, or an element that leaves other elements unchanged when combined with them by a specified operation.
The probabilities of all possible outcomes must sum to unity.
In this ring, the identity matrix serves as the unity for multiplication.
Note
Mathematicians use the word where a plain "one" would sound casual or ambiguous. The fixed phrase is roots of unity: the cube roots of unity are the numbers whose cube is 1. In a ring or field, the unity is the multiplicative identity, the element with 1·a = a for every a. Probabilities likewise "sum to unity", a register marker of technical prose.
- 5Any of the three classical rules of drama (unity of action, unity of place, and unity of time) requiring a single plot, a single setting, and events confined to one day.
Racine observed the unity of time strictly, compressing the tragedy into a single day.
Modern playwrights rarely respect the unity of place, shifting scenes freely from act to act.
Note
Theater criticism almost always pairs it with an of-phrase naming the rule: unity of action, unity of place, unity of time. Together they are "the unities", plural, a doctrine Renaissance critics drew from Aristotle's Poetics. Aristotle himself insisted only on unity of action. Playwrights are said to observe, respect or break a unity, so the word behaves like the name of a precept.
- 6The form of consensus by which a Quaker business meeting signals that a decision has been reached; dissenting members must explicitly stand aside, possibly being recorded in the minutes.
The clerk tested for unity before recording the minute on the property sale.
Although she had doubts, she stood aside so the meeting could move forward in unity.
Note
A Quaker term of art, and not the same thing as unanimity. A business meeting can reach unity while some members still disagree, as long as each dissenter explicitly stands aside, perhaps with a note in the minutes. The usual phrasings follow from this: a clerk tests for unity, and a meeting moves forward in unity. That makes it a procedural outcome rather than simply agreement or harmony.
- 7In property law, any of the four conditions of time, title, interest, and possession that must all be present for a joint tenancy to exist.
The deed failed to create the unity required for a joint tenancy, so the court treated the owners as tenants in common.
Each unity (of time, title, interest, and possession) must exist for the joint tenancy to stand.
Note
Property law keeps its own set of unities: four, against drama's three rules. They are possession, interest, time and title. Joint tenants must hold identical interests, acquired at the same time by the same instrument, each with an undivided right to possess the whole. When one unity is missing, the co-owners are typically treated as tenants in common instead.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English unite, borrowed via Anglo-Norman and Old French unité from Latin ūnitās, built on ūnus ("one") with a noun-forming suffix. It goes back ultimately to Proto-Indo-European *óynos ("one, single"), making it distantly related to "one" and "an," and it replaced the native Old English ānnes ("oneness").