resonance

English · Thesaurus

AI In plain words

Writing a short explanation…

Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.

resonance

  • /ˈɹɛzənəns/ UK

Where it comes from

From Old French resonance (French résonance), from Latin resonantia (“echo”), from resonō (“to resound”).

noun resonances

  1. uncountable The quality of being resonant. The leiter-wagons contained great, square boxes, with handles of thick rope; these were evidently empty by the ease with which the Slovaks handled them, and by their resonance as they were roughly moved.

    Similar: resound

  2. countable A resonant sound, echo, or reverberation, such as that produced by blowing over the top of a bottle. He passed on, and the lights and cries of the station dropped away, merged in a wider haze and a hollower resonance, as the train gathered itself up with a long shake and rolled out again into the darkness.
  3. countable, uncountable The sound produced by a hollow body part such as the chest cavity upon auscultation, especially that produced while the patient is speaking.
  4. countable, figuratively, uncountable Something that evokes an association, or a strong emotion; something that strikes a chord. emotional resonance
  5. countable, uncountable The increase in the amplitude of an oscillation of a system under the influence of a periodic force whose frequency is close to that of the system's natural frequency. One of the most important developments beyond the original concept of magnetic resonance is so-called double resonance in which, as the name suggests, one excites one resonant transition of a system while simultaneously monitoring a different transition.
  6. countable, uncountable A short-lived subatomic particle or state of atomic excitation that results from the collision of atomic particles. When experiments with the first ‘atom-smashers’ took place in the 1950s to 1960s, many short-lived heavier siblings of the proton and neutron, known as ‘resonances’, were discovered.
  7. countable, uncountable An increase in the strength or duration of a musical tone produced by sympathetic vibration.
  8. countable, uncountable The property of a compound that can be visualized as having two structures differing only in the distribution of electrons.

    Similar: mesomerism

  9. countable, uncountable An influence of the gravitational forces of one orbiting object on the orbit of another, causing periodic perturbations. The dedicated time Cheops spent observing the star helped astronomers iron out the mixed signals from the TESS data to determine how many planets were crossing in front of the star and the resonance of their orbits.
  10. countable, uncountable The condition where the inductive and capacitive reactances have equal magnitude.
  11. countable, uncountable A quality of human relationship with the world. Resonance is a kind of relationship to the world, formed through affect and emotion, intrinsic interest, and perceived self-efficacy, in which subject and world are mutually affected and transformed.

Thesaurus

Closest in meaning: reverberance, ringing, sonorousness, sonority, vibrancy, plangency, resonant, echo, profile, impact, visibility, conjugation, response, relevance, ring, tone

Translations

Every language

noun condition of being resonant

Españolresonancia
Portuguêsressonância
Françaisrésonance
DeutschResonanz
Italianorisonanza
Ελληνικάαπήχηση apíchisi
Românărezonanță
Русскийрезона́нс rezonáns
עבריתתהודה tehudá

noun resonant sound

中文迴響 /回响 huíxiǎng
Portuguêsressonância
Ελληνικάαντήχηση antíchisi
עבריתתהודה tehudá

noun in physics, the increase in the amplitude of an oscillation of a system

中文共振 gòngzhèn
Françaisrésonance
Русскийрезона́нс rezonáns

noun property of a compound; mesomerism

DeutschMesomerie

Talk about this word

Cite this
MLA

"resonance." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/resonance. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

resonance. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/resonance

Chicago

"resonance." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/resonance.

BibTeX
@misc{resonance_2026,
  title = {resonance},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/resonance},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}