Ohm
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 In the International System of Units, the derived unit of electrical resistance; the electrical resistance of a device across which a potential difference of one volt causes a current of one ampere.
"If the volt, ampere and ohm were taken as the absolute units, the practical units would be the ampere, begohm and begavolt, names just as convenient as ampere, coulomb and farad."
- 2 a unit of electrical resistance equal to the resistance between two points on a conductor when a potential difference of one volt between them produces a current of one ampere wordnet
Example
More examples"The unit of resistance is the ohm, and its symbol is the same as the capital letter Omega in the Greek alphabet, "Ω"."
Etymology
Named after Bavarian physicist Georg Ohm. A German surname, first recorded in the 12th century, from German Ohm (“uncle”), from Proto-West Germanic *auhaim (“maternal uncle”), from or related to Proto-Germanic *awô (“grandfather, paternal uncle”) + *haimaz (“home”). Doublet of oom and of dialectal eam (“uncle”).
Related phrases
More for "ohm"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.