The ability to assume different forms or shapes.
Used in a Sentence
polymorphism
Definitions, parts of speech, synonyms, and sentence examples for polymorphism.
Editorial note
Absolute beginners are confused by polymorphism and loop constructs because they don't understand the problems the abstractions solve.
Examples14
Definitions4
Parts of speech1
Quick take
The ability to assume different forms or shapes.
Meaning at a glance
The clearest senses and uses of polymorphism gathered in one view.
(crystallography) The ability of a solid material to exist in more than one form or crystal structure; pleomorphism.
(object-oriented programming) A feature pertaining to the dynamic treatment of data elements based on their type, allowing for a method to have several definitions.
Definitions
Core meanings and parts of speech for polymorphism.
noun
The ability to assume different forms or shapes.
noun
(crystallography) The ability of a solid material to exist in more than one form or crystal structure; pleomorphism.
noun
(object-oriented programming) A feature pertaining to the dynamic treatment of data elements based on their type, allowing for a method to have several definitions.
noun
(biology) The coexistence, in the same locality, of two or more distinct forms independent of sex, not connected by intermediate gradations, but produced from common parents.
Example sentences
Absolute beginners are confused by polymorphism and loop constructs because they don't understand the problems the abstractions solve.
There's a lot of overlap between a dynamic dispatch mechanism and parametric polymorphism.
OOP facilitates encapsulation and polymorphism which are great tools when designing software systems.
Parametric polymorphism is something every statically typed programming language should have in 2015.
All of these languages offer tools to handle similar duck typing via interfaces or traits or polymorphism, but they are far from simple to use.
GHC has great optimizations within the scope of modules (and seems to balance for the right level of polymorphism/modularity/linking), and can inline some things across module boundaries.
No, it's a brilliant use of polymorphism.
I haven't seen any rejoinders to that document that contradict the fact that you pay for parametric polymorphism with either slower compilation or slower runtime.
Factory, which favors opaque, magical return-type polymorphism.
(1) what happens with yeti when you have polymorphism and mutable containers?
The original libraries get a lot of their expressive power from polymorphism - Requests gets a tremendous amount of mileage out of letting you pass in keyword arguments to the `get` method, for example.
Finally, most of the things that are supposed to be OOP's strong points (like polymorphism, encapsulation and modularity), I feel, can be done better in functional languages.
Quote examples
If I was going to solve it I don't think i would use a "dispatch table" I wold prefer to use polymorphism.
I have no idea what "subtype polymorphism" is.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers drawn from the clearest meanings and examples for this word.
How do you use polymorphism in a sentence?
Absolute beginners are confused by polymorphism and loop constructs because they don't understand the problems the abstractions solve.
What does polymorphism mean?
The ability to assume different forms or shapes.
What part of speech is polymorphism?
polymorphism is commonly used as noun.