What does "absorbance" mean?

A logarithmic measure of the amount of light that is absorbed when passing through a substance; the capacity of a substance to absorb light of a given wavelength; optical density.

How do you pronounce "absorbance"?

Pronounced //əbˈsɔɹ.bn̩s//.

Absorbance

Q: What is a synonym for "absorbance"?

Common synonyms include: optical density, photographic density, photographic density, transmission density.

//əbˈsɔɹ.bn̩s// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
A logarithmic measure of the amount of light that is absorbed when passing through a substance; the capacity of a substance to absorb light of a given wavelength; optical density. countable, uncountable
2
(physics) a measure of the extent to which a substance transmits light or other electromagnetic radiation wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

optical density photographic density photographic density transmission density

Example

More examples

"In fact, the absorption enhancement that we see is in the range of 20 to 50 times the single-pass absorbance."

Etymology

From absorb + -ance.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.