Thesaurus results for NUCLEI

nuclei

noun

variants also nucleuses

plural of nucleus

as in centers

a thing or place that is of greatest importance to an activity or interest a college campus that was a nucleus of opposition to the war

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

as in hearts

the central part or aspect of something under consideration the nucleus of the movement's methodology has always been passive resistance

Synonyms & Similar Words

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of nuclei Jet fuel combustion produces not just CO₂ but also soot particles that serve as the nuclei for contrail clouds—thin cirrus clouds that capture solar radiation. —

Srishti Gupta, Interesting Engineering, 29 Apr. 2026 Core players giving their squad a high baseline is always vital in the playoffs, and the Ducks finally have some chance at hanging with other teams’ nuclei thanks to Carlsson and Gauthier’s ongoing emergence. —

Andrew Knoll, Oc Register, 19 Apr. 2026 First, in most materials, the thorium nuclei release their energy not as light, but through a process called internal conversion, where the energy is transferred to an electron in the material instead. —

Andrei Derevianko, The Conversation, 14 Apr. 2026 Hydrogen atoms are the simplest nuclei, with a single proton orbited by an electron, so that’s typically what physicists have used for their experiments to measure the proton’s charge radius. —

ArsTechnica, 14 Apr. 2026 At the nearly 17-mile-long circular particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that sits deep below the French Alps, CERN scientists recreated the quark-gluon plasma by smashing together atomic nuclei of iron at near-light speed. —

Robert Lea, Space.com, 8 Apr. 2026 Cosmic rays are a mix of different subatomic particles, including helium nuclei (two protons and two neutrons bound together) or even heavier elements. —

Phil Plait, Scientific American, 3 Apr. 2026 In theory, beryllium-8 normally decays into two helium-4 nuclei. —

Big Think, 19 Mar. 2026 With less pollution, there are fewer nuclei on which water droplets aggregate to form clouds—and therefore fewer clouds, both over land and the ocean downwind, researchers hypothesize. —

Lauren Sommer, NPR, 12 Mar. 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for nuclei

Noun

Still, much of the public conversations around education centers on test scores and older students, leaving early childhood largely out of the discussion.

— Tina Dello Russo, Boston Herald, 10 May 2026
Soriano and Pawlowski have been two of the leaders who have protested the location of any Amazon data centers at 61st Avenue and Colorado Street.

— Deborah Laverty, Chicago Tribune, 9 May 2026