moiety

1. (anthropology) Each descent group in a culture which is divided exactly into two descent groups.Examples: "The villages are divided into two patrilineal totemic moieties and two patrilineal ceremonial moieties. The totemic moieties are subdivided into patrilineal clans (ngaiva): there are between fifty and a hundred clans of which between ten or twenty are represented in any one village[…]."; "The moieties are linked to or bear the names of beings or forces expressing the cosmic dichotomy. Most common are heaven and earth moieties, "above" and "below," or moieties named after birds and land animals (or aquatic animals), as is the case among the Winnebago and in the phratry system of the Northwest Coast Indians."

2. (chemistry) A specific segment of a molecule.Examples: "Aniline has both a phenyl and an amino moiety."; "We are therefore driven to the conclusion that the proteid food is split into a urea moiety and a fatty moiety, that the urea moiety is at once discharged, and that such of the fatty moiety as is not made use of directly by the body is stored up as adipose tissue."; "[H]ydrolysis of sialic acid moieties by neuraminidase of myxoviruses facilitates cellular attachment and invasion, and the disturbed secretion and dispersion of mucin in cystic fibrosis facilitate colonization with P. aeruginosa."