combinatorial
Americanadjective
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of, relating to, or involving the combination of elements, as in phonetics or music.
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of or relating to the enumeration of the number of ways of doing some specific task or of arranging items in a specific configuration.
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Mathematics. of or relating to combination, or the modes, properties, etc., of combinations.
Other Word Forms
- combinatorially adverb
Etymology
Origin of combinatorial
First recorded in 1810–20; combinatory + -al 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The lack of flexible and open-ended communication, which occurs by means of combinatorial structures or compositionality that allows us to put just about any idea into language, was seen as the great barrier.
From Salon • May 29, 2025
The minigames within Lorelei almost included Nim, an ancient combinatorial game that appears in “Last Year at Marienbad.”
From New York Times • May 15, 2024
“But the fact that they have this combinatorial basis is already very interesting.”
From Science Magazine • May 7, 2024
The findings suggest that not only does each edition potentially fine-tune glutamate release, but that combinations among them can act in a combinatorial fashion.
From Science Daily • Sep. 18, 2023
They indulge as well in reductio ad absurdum, the logical practice of taking any premise to an extreme, and in various sorts of combinatorial word play.
From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
