affordance
noun
affordance is spelled A-F-F-O-R-D-A-N-C-E: 10 letters. It appears about once in every 28 million words in written English, the 159,707th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, affordance means “Anything that is provided or furnished by an environment to an organism dwelling within it” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of affordance is affordances.
How many letters and syllables are in affordance?
| Letters | 10: A-F-F-O-R-D-A-N-C-E |
|---|---|
| In writing | about once in every 28 million words; the 159,707th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How common is affordance?
Affordance appears about once in every 28 million words in written English, the 159,707th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Forms of affordance
- affordances plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does affordance mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Anything that is provided or furnished by an environment to an organism dwelling within it.
- 2
A potential transaction or operation that is made possible by a given object or environment; especially, one that is made easily discoverable.
- 3
Any interactive control or component serving as a cue to the user to take some action.
The grab handles on the edges of this image are affordances that the user can exploit to change the size of the image.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Where does affordance come from?
From afford + -ance; coined in 1977 by psychologist James J. Gibson, and adopted in 1988 by Donald Norman in the context of human-machine interaction.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).