component

American  

[kuhm-poh-nuhnt, kom-] / kəmˈpoʊ nənt, kɒm- /

noun

components plural

1. a constituent part; element; ingredient.

2. a part of a mechanical or electrical system.

   They checked the pads, rotors, and other components of my car's brake system.

3. Physics. the projection of a vector quantity, as force or velocity, along an axis.

4. Physical Chemistry. one of the set of the minimum number of chemical constituents by which every phase of a given system can be described.

5. Mathematics.

   1. a connected subset of a set, not contained in any other connected subset of the set.

   2. a coordinate of a vector.

6. Linguistics.

   1. one of the major subdivisions of a generative grammar.

      base component;

      transformational component;

      semantic component;

      phonological component.

   2. a feature determined by componential analysis.

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adjective

1. being or serving as an element (in something larger); composing; constituent.

   the component parts of a computer system.

component British  

/ kəmˈpəʊnənt, ˌkɒmpəˈnɛnʃəl /

noun

1. a constituent part or aspect of something more complex

   a component of a car

2. Also called: element.  any electrical device, such as a resistor, that has distinct electrical characteristics and that may be connected to other electrical devices to form a circuit

3. maths

   1. one of a set of two or more vectors whose resultant is a given vector

   2. the projection of this given vector onto a specified line

4. one of the minimum number of chemically distinct constituents necessary to describe fully the composition of each phase in a system See phase rule

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adjective

1. forming or functioning as a part or aspect; constituent

Synonym Usage

See element.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• subcomponent
  noun
• componental
  adjective
• componented
  adjective
• componential
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• components
  plural

Etymology

Origin of component

First recorded in 1555–65; from Latin compōnent- (stem of compōnēns, present participle of compōnere “to put together”), equivalent to com- com- + pōn(ere) “to put” + -ent- -ent

Explanation

It's the Ikea curse: You spend four hours figuring out how to piece together your new furniture, only to be left with one random component, or part, that doesn't seem to fit anywhere. It's not surprising that component is related to a Latin word that means "to put together." You simply can't put something together without all of the correct components. Technically speaking, a component is an element of a system or a part of a machine. But a component can also be a factor or ingredient, such as the components of a decision or the components of a really good chocolate cake.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

component components

“Recipients must incorporate reproductive goals counseling as a core component of program implementation,” the new guidelines read.

From Slate ● Jul. 28, 2026

And how she dressed was going to be a key component.

From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026

Core retail sales, which excludes the auto component and gasoline, climbed 0.9%, retracing a 0.7% decline in the category recorded in April.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026

A spectrum separates light into its component wavelengths, allowing astronomers to investigate the chemistry and motion of distant objects.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 23, 2026

The idealism I still nurtured as a fifteen-year-old did not have a racial component.

From "Bad Boy" by Walter Dean Myers

Microsoft and its rivals have been scrambling to buy up artificial-intelligence hardware at a time when prices for key memory components have skyrocketed, raising questions about profits.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026

Puder has ambitious plans to expand the enterprise, with more schools and related components in real estate, school security, artificial intelligence and school health clinics.

From Salon ● Jul. 27, 2026

Kelly said that the bomb was "not just components or pieces".

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky alleged after the first attack that the facilities were used to "supply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment."

From Barron's ● Jul. 24, 2026

As far as Aristotle was concerned, as we saw in Chapter 3, causal explanations had four components: the formal cause, the final cause, the material cause and the efficient cause.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

Related Words

• factor
• ingredient
• item
• peripheral
• piece
• segment
• unit