attractor

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a person, thing, or quality that draws interest, attention, or other things toward it

   The new riverside park became a major attractor for visitors to the town.

2. 2
   noun

   in mathematics and physics, a set of states toward which a dynamical system tends to evolve

   The simulation settled onto a strange attractor instead of repeating a simple cycle.

Formed from attract + the agent suffix -or. Attract comes from Latin attractus, the past participle of attrahere ("to draw toward"), from ad- ("toward") + trahere ("to draw"). The technical dynamical-systems sense treats a limiting set as something that draws nearby states toward it.

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