polarization

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

noun the phenomenon in which waves of light or other radiation are restricted in direction of vibration
noun the condition of having or giving polarity

Borrowed from French polarisation. By surface analysis, polarize + -ation or polar + -ization.

The famous Walking Stewart went crazy on "the polarization of moral truth." — English Eccentrics and Eccentricities, John Timbs
This condition is called "polarization," and to prevent it has been the aim of all inventors. — Electricity for Boys, James Slough Zerbe
Enjolras bore within him the plenitude of the revolution; he was incomplete, however, so far as the absolute can be so; he had too much of Saint-Just about him, and not enough of Anacharsis Cloots; still, his mind, in the society of the Friends of the A B C, had ended by undergoing a certain polarization from Combeferre’s ideas; for some time past, he had been gradually emerging from the narrow form of dogma, and had allowed himself to incline to the broadening influence of progress, and he had come to accept, as a definitive and magnificent evolution, the transformation of the great French Republic, into the immense human republic. — Les Misérables, Victor Hugo

polarisation

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