capillarity

From French capillarité.

capillarity (countable and uncountable, plural capillarities)

1. The interaction between the surfaces of a solid and liquid in contact that distorts the normal geometry of the liquid surface; especially the rise or fall of a liquid in a fine tube.
   • 1856, William Somerville Orr, Orr's Circle of the Sciences:

     Hence the allowance to be made for diminution of the height of a mercurial column, owing to capillarity, is determined by two considerations — the diameter of the tube and versed sine of the corresponding meniscus.

• capillary action
• wicking

• meniscus
• surface tension

• piratically