homomorphism

noun

Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *sem- Proto-Indo-European *somHós Proto-Hellenic *homós Ancient Greek ὁμός (homós)der. English homo- English morphism English homomorphism From homo- + morphism.

1. A structure-preserving map between two algebraic structures of the same type, such as groups, rings, or vector spaces.

   “A field homomorphism is a map from one field to another one which is additive, multiplicative, zero-preserving, and unit-preserving.”

   “1954, Kuo-Tsai Chen, Iterated Integrals and Exponential Homomorphisms, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Reprinted in 2001, Philippe Tondeur (editor), Collected Papers of K.-T. Chen, Birkhäuser, page 54, This motivates a generalization, and exponential homomorphisms are now defined, in an algebraic fashion, from certain free products to formal power series rings with non-commutative indeterminates.”

2. A similar appearance of two unrelated organisms or structures, as for example with fish and whales.