moiety
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: anthropology
chemistry
human-sciences
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
Etymology: Borrowed from Middle French moytié, from Old French meitié (“half”) (modern French moitié (“half”)), from Late Latin medietās (“centre, midpoint; half”), from Latin medius (“half; middle”) + -tās (from Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ts (suffix forming nouns indicating a state of being)). Medius is ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos (“middle”), possibly from *me-dʰi- (“among; with”), from *me (“in the middle of; among; with”). The word is a doublet of mediety.
Inflected forms:
form: moieties
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: moietie
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: moyity
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: A half.
pos: noun
examples: They were faire Ladies, till they fondly ſtriu’d / With th’Heliconian maides for mayſtery; / Of whom they ouer-comen, were depriu’d / Of their proud beautie, and th’one moyity / Transform’d to fiſh, for their bold ſurquedry, / But th’vpper halfe their hew retayned ſtill, / And their ſweet skill in wonted melody; / Which euer after they abuſd to ill, / T’allure weake traueillers, whom gotten they did kill.
The death of Anthony / Is not a ſingle doome. In the name lay / A moity of the world.
[E]very merchant and paſſenger, that brings merchandizes into this land of Ireland out of England to the ſumme of one hundred pounds, that he ſhall buy and bring with him into the ſaid land in bowes to the value of one hundred ſhillings, […] and if any merchant or paſſenger bring any merchandize into the ſaid land, and bring with him no bowes as is afore rehearſed, that the ſaid merchant ſhall loſe and pay the value of the ſaid bowes, the one moietie thereof to the King, and the other moiety to the ſearchers of the ſame for the time being; […]
From New Holland the emeu, / With his better moiety, / Has paid a visit to the Zo- / ological Society.
Suffer she must; but there are degrees of pain, and the whole catalogue of miseries which man, either from design or carelessness, inflicts on his weaker moiety, is trifling when compared to jealousy, as man himself occasionally knows from bitter experience.
Forty-eight inventories in the Cornwall sample include references to ‘moieties’ or halves of livestock and crops, while a quarter of these also included moieties of farm equipment and household stock. For example, Richard Cooke of Madron, in 1617, besides stock, stuff and equipment which he fully owned, left 1 moiety of a 2 year old heifer, 13s 4d; 1 moiety of ½ year beasts and advantage, 26s 8d; 3 moieties of horse, 50s; […]
gloss: A share or portion, especially a smaller share.
pos: noun
examples: "Thou must stand in the flame while thy senses will endure, and when it embraces thee suck the fire down into thy very heart, and let it leap and play around thy every part, so that thou lose no moiety of its virtue."
To get lands you often had to deal with a hundred or four hundred owners, or an entire community. […] Other properties, originally bought by a farming group for so many pesos primitivos, had through the years seen the moieties endlessly subdivided.
Arrangements were made with the B. & M.R., however, whereby the latter took over the Machen Loop in consideration for granting the P.C. & N.R. a moiety of the earnings of the Caerphilly branch.
gloss: Each descent group in a culture which is divided exactly into two descent groups.
pos: noun
examples: The villages are divided into two patrilineal totemic moieties and two patrilineal ceremonial moieties. The totemic moieties are subdivided into patrilineal clans (ngaiva): there are between fifty and a hundred clans of which between ten or twenty are represented in any one village[…].
The moieties are linked to or bear the names of beings or forces expressing the cosmic dichotomy. Most common are heaven and earth moieties, "above" and "below," or moieties named after birds and land animals (or aquatic animals), as is the case among the Winnebago and in the phratry system of the Northwest Coast Indians.
gloss: A specific segment of a molecule.
pos: noun
examples: Aniline has both a phenyl and an amino moiety.
We are therefore driven to the conclusion that the proteid food is split into a urea moiety and a fatty moiety, that the urea moiety is at once discharged, and that such of the fatty moiety as is not made use of directly by the body is stored up as adipose tissue.
[H]ydrolysis of sialic acid moieties by neuraminidase of myxoviruses facilitates cellular attachment and invasion, and the disturbed secretion and dispersion of mucin in cystic fibrosis facilitate colonization with P. aeruginosa.
Derived words: matrimoiety
patrimoiety
submoiety
Translations: