Definition of "confluent"

confluent

/ˈkɑn.flu.ənt/

adjective
comparative more confluent, superlative most confluent
1. (of two or more objects or shapes) Converging, merging or flowing together into one.
  Quotations
  Yonder the river roll’d, whose bed,Their labyrinthine lingerings o’er,Received the confluent rills.
  1801, Robert Southey, “(please specify the page)”, in Thalaba the Destroyer, volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] [F]or T[homas] N[orton] Longman and O[wen] Rees, […], by Biggs and Cottle, […]
  A confluent smallpox had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up.
  1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 19”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley
2. (meteorology, of wind) Converging, especially as viewed on a weather chart.
3. (biology) Describing cells in a culture that merge to form a mass.
4. (geometry, of a triangle) Exactly the same size as another triangle.
5. (mathematics) Given a binary operation → β on a set A, and its reflexive, transitive closure ↠ β , then, for all a1, a2, and a3 in A, if a1 → β a2 and a1 → β a3, then there must exist an a4 in A such that a2 ↠ β a4 and a3 ↠ β a4.
noun
plural confluents
1. A stream uniting and flowing with another; a confluent stream.