Ectropy

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The overall increase in the organization of a system countable, uncountable

Etymology

“This term was suggested by W. V. Quine in discussions following this symposium: Entropy, he pointed out, is Greek for turning in; the opposite term should therefore be the Greek for turning out, namely ectropy. Since the coaction cardioid literally turns in and out of the circle of reference, his short, elegant term is used throughout.”

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