atomic — English Dictionary

Adjective

1. Of or relating to atoms; composed of atoms; monatomic.

   Usage

   • not-comparable

   Antonyms

   molecular

   Examples

   A stream of atomic hydrogen is emitted.

2. Employing or relating to nuclear energy or processes.

   Usage

   • not-comparable

   Examples

   atomic energy; atomic bombs

   Some nutjob once built a small atomic pile in his back yard.

   More examples (1)

   Before the atomic spy Allan Nunn May left Canada to go to London, a treff in London had to be arranged for him and another agent.

3. Employing or relating to nuclear energy or processes. Very strong and overpowering.

   Usage

   • broadly
   • Colloquial
   • not-comparable

   Synonyms

   nuclear

4. Infinitesimally small.

   Usage

   • not-comparable

   Examples

   The hairs on a dust mite are almost atomic.

5. Unable to be split or made any smaller.

   Usage

   • not-comparable

   Synonyms

   discreteindivisibleunatomizable

   Examples

   A bit is an atomic item of data.

6. Unable to be split or made any smaller. Containing a single change, as opposed to involving numerous unrelated changes.

   Usage

   • not-comparable
   • of a commit in a VCS

7. Unable to be split or made any smaller. Lacking logical operators; unable to be made simpler in logical form.

   Usage

   • not-comparable
   • of a proposition

8. Unable to be split or made any smaller. Such that for every element b>0 there exists an atom a such that b≥a>0.

   Usage

   • not-comparable
   • of a partially ordered set with a least element 0

9. Guaranteed to complete either fully or not at all while waiting in a pause, and running synchronously when called by multiple asynchronous threads.

   Usage

   • not-comparable
   • of an operation

   Examples

   In order to avoid race conditions, this operation has to be atomic.

   Whenever possible, use atomic types instead of mutexes.

   More examples (1)

   It also provides an atomic compareAndSet method (which if successful has the memory effects of both reading and writing a volatile variable) and, for convenience, atomic add, increment, and decrement methods.

Noun

1. An atomic operation.

Adjective

1. of or relating to or comprising atoms

   Examples

   atomic structure

   atomic hydrogen

2. (weapons) deriving destructive energy from the release of atomic energy

   Synonyms

   nuclear

   Examples

   nuclear war

   nuclear weapons

   More examples (1)

   atomic bombs

3. immeasurably small