Afines

Afines is a Spanish term that functions as both an adjective and a noun, with meanings that depend on context. In general, afín means related or akin, and afines is used to describe connections by relation, similarity, or affinity. It can refer to people, concepts, or objects that share a close link. In everyday language, it is common to speak of los afines (in-laws) to denote relatives by marriage, and of términos afines to indicate semantically related terms or concepts.

In linguistics and lexicography, afines describes words with related meaning or etymology. Terms that are semantically close or have a common linguistic origin may be described as afines. While cognates are specifically historically related words across languages, afines can be used more broadly to indicate relatedness in meaning or field, even when direct historical derivation is not established.

In mathematics and geometry, afín corresponds to the English term affine. Transformaciones afines are affine transformations, typically defined by a map x → Ax + b, where A is a linear transformation and b is a translation. Such transformations map lines to lines, preserve parallelism and collinearity, and maintain affine combinations of points, but they do not generally preserve distances or angles.

In legal and social contexts, afines also denotes relatives by marriage, forming the category of in-laws. The degree of afinidad or affinity describes the strength of the relationship in familial or legal terms.

Etymology: afín derives from Latin affinis, meaning neighboring, related, or connected. The term has been adopted into Spanish with broad usage across disciplines and everyday speech.

See also: affine transformation, in-law, affinity.