absorber

noun

Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂ep Proto-Indo-European *-o Proto-Indo-European *h₂epó Proto-Italic *ap Latin abder. Latin ab- Proto-Indo-European *srebʰ- Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éyeti Proto-Indo-European *srobʰéyeti Proto-Italic *sorβeō Latin sorbeō Latin absorbeō Old French assorbir Middle French absorberder. English absorb Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzijos Latin -āriusnom. Latin -āriusbor. Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz Proto-West Germanic *-ārī Old English -ere Middle English -ere English -er English absorber From absorb + -er.

1. Something that absorbs.

   “[…] these Symptoms are only curred, by such Medicines as correct the Acidity and Acrimony of the Blood, viz. When it most partakes of Acrimony by sweet diaphoretick Decoctions, or some sort of Acids, which dull and take off their corroding Edges, or when they are more Acid, by volatile Salts that carry them off by Sweat or Urine; or by Acid Absorbers, which by correcting the Acidities of the Pancreatick Juice, leave the Ferment of the Liver more predominant […]”

   “1756, Thomas Amory, The Life of John Buncle, Esq., London: J. Noon, Chapter 36 “Remarks on the delluge,” p. , The swallows especially must do great work in the case, if we take into their number not only very many open gulphs or chasms, the depth of which no line or sound can reach; but likewise the communications of very many parts of the sea, and of many great unfathomable lochs, with the abyss. These absorbers could easily receive what had before come out of them.”

2. Something that absorbs.
3. Something that absorbs.
4. A person who absorbs.

   “Old Lady Dacier’s bluntness in speaking of her grandson would have shocked Lady Wathin as much as it astonished, had she been less of an ardent absorber of aristocratic manners.”

   “[…] since few wanted mosaics any more he had turned to fresco, becoming the greatest absorber and eclectic in Italy. He had learned everything that the earlier fresco painters, from the time of Cimabue, had to teach.”

5. A set that, under suitable transformations, can contain any set from a given class within a topological space.

   “By proposition 6.5.4, X is a skeletoid and hence an absorber by theorem 6.5.1.”

   “Skeletoids and absorbers play an important role in infinite-dimensional topology. The existence and uniqueness of skeletoids (and absorbers) with respect to certain collections allow one to study completely metrizable infinite-dimensional manifolds by using the technique of compact manifolds, incomplete manifolds by those of complete ones and so on.”