Etymology
From Middle French structure, from Latin structūra (“a fitting together, adjustment, building, erection, a building, edifice, structure”), from struere, past participle structus (“pile up, arrange, assemble, build”).
Noun
structure (countable and uncountable, plural structures)
- A cohesive whole built up of distinct parts.
- The birds had built an amazing structure out of sticks and various discarded items.
- The underlying shape of a solid.
- He studied the structure of her face.
- The overall form or organization of something.
- The structure of a sentence.
- The structure of the society was still a mystery.
- A set of rules defining behavior.
- For some, the structure of school life was oppressive.
- (computing) Several pieces of data treated as a unit.
- This structure contains both date and timezone information.
- (fishing) Underwater terrain or objects (such as a dead tree or a submerged car) that tend to attract fish
- There's lots of structure to be fished along the west shore of the lake.
- A body, such as a political party, with a cohesive purpose or outlook.
- The South African leader went off to consult with the structures.
Verb
structure (third-person singular simple present structures, present participle structuring, simple past and past participle structured)
- (transitive) To give structure to; to arrange.
- I'm trying to structure my time better so I'm not always late.
- I've structured the deal to limit the amount of money we can lose.
Related terms
- infrastructure
- macrostructure
- microstructure
- restructure
- structural
- structuralism
- substructure
- superstructure
- unstructured
Credits
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