affordance

noun

af·​for·​dance ə-ˈfȯr-dᵊn(t)s 

plural affordances

: the quality or property of an object that defines its possible uses or makes clear how it can or should be used

We sit or stand on a chair because those affordances are fairly obvious.

—Scott Lafee

An affordance is a resource or support that the environment offers an animal; the animal in turn must possess the capabilities to perceive it and to use it.

—Eleanor J. Gibson et al.

Examples of affordance in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Clearly, trajectories are also influenced if not monitored by the structural affordances provided by the designers who have functionally and hierarchically classified pieces of information. —Carmen Daniela Maier, Encyclopedia Britannica, 26 May 2026

For the developers at Anthropic, but not for Pete Hegseth, ceding control over who lives and who dies to these latest technological affordances is, at least for the time being, a degree of agency too far. —Christine Smallwood, Harpers Magazine, 21 Apr. 2026

Each organizational choice created affordances and constraints that shaped subsequent innovations. —Big Think, 9 Feb. 2026

One installation at Tribeca was exemplary in embracing the affordances of twenty-first-century immersive media: Fragile Home (2024),an MR offering by the Czech Republic’s Ondřej Moravec and Ukrainian VR designer Victoria Lopukhina. —Caroline A. Jones, Artforum, 1 Nov. 2025

Sometimes, the affordance is love. —Jared Weiss, New York Times, 29 Sep. 2025

This shifted my focus from visual perfection to cognitive predictability—prioritizing clarity, affordance and immediate feedback over novelty. —Expert Panel®, Forbes.com, 17 Sep. 2025

Word History

Etymology

afford + -ance

Note: As a term in the study of cognition introduced by the American psychologist James J. Gibson (1904-79) in The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (Boston, 1966) and later essays.

First Known Use

1966, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for affordance

• accordance
• concordance
• discordance