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Definition of "covalence" [covalence]

  • The number of electron pairs an atom can share with other atoms. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "covalence" in a sentence
  • "In proposing a new American government, Paine scoffed caustically at the whole idea of balance and the covalence among branches that we're taught to revere as exceptionally American, but were really derived from the post-Settlement English constitution."
  • "In addition, new concepts of binding site covalence, estimation of pathway distance and organism specificity were taken into account to identify the best synthetic pathway."
  • "The covalence is performed by a bi-polar link: when walking, the ants are in a chain where the back, polar a, of an ant is followed by the head, polar b, of the next ant."
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