flow
Definitions
General English
- noun the movement of things such as liquid or air, or of people
General Science
- noun continuous movement of a fluid in a particular direction
- noun the rate at which a substance is moving
- noun the movement of the sea or water affected by tides towards a shore as the tide rises.
Aviation
- verb to move or run smoothly with continuity, as a fluid
Cars & Driving
- noun the passing of liquid or current through something, also the amount conveyed
Construction
- A measure of the consistency of freshly mixed concrete, mortar, or cement paste in terms of the increase in diameter of a molded, truncated cone specimen after liming a specified number of times. See also flow table.
Economics
- noun the movement of something shown as taking place over a period of time. cash flow is the movement of cash in and out of a business; flow of income is the movement of income into the account of an individual or firm.
Electronics
- A smooth and uninterrupted motion, progress, or sequence. For example, the movement of a fluid through a duct.
- The movement of electric charges. For instance, the flow of electrons through a conductor.
- The movement of information through a system. Also, the sequence in which operations are performed. For example, the movement from point to point within a flowchart.
Health Economics
- (written as Flow)A variable having an interval of time dimension: so much per period.
Media Studies
- noun the movement of something such as information from one place to another
Medical
- noun a movement of liquid or gas
- noun the amount of liquid or gas which is moving
Origin & History of “flow”
The prehistoric Indo-European *pleu-, ancestor of a heterogeneous range of English vocabulary, from fleet to plover, denoted ‘flow, float’. It had a variant form *plō-, which passed into Germanic as *flō-. this formed the basis of the Old English verb flōwan (whence modern English flow) and also of the noun flood.
