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Brewer's theorem

Brewer's theorem proper noun: a theorem stating that it is impossible for a distributed data store to simultaneously provide more than two of three guarantees: consistency (every read receives the most recent write or an error), availability (every request receives a non-error response, without the guarantee that it contains the most recent write), and partition tolerance (the system continues to operate despite an arbitrary number of messages being dropped or delayed between nodes).

Proper noun

Brewer's theorem

  1. A theorem stating that it is impossible for a distributed data store to simultaneously provide more than two of three guarantees: consistency (every read receives the most recent write or an error), availability (every request receives a non-error response, without the guarantee that it contains the most recent write), and partition tolerance (the system continues to operate despite an arbitrary number of messages being dropped or delayed between nodes).

Origin of Brewer's theorem

Named after computer scientist Eric Brewer.

Questions about Brewer's theorem

What does Brewer's theorem mean?
Brewer's theorem means a theorem stating that it is impossible for a distributed data store to simultaneously provide more than two of three guarantees: consistency (every read receives the most recent write or an error), availability (every request receives a non-error response, without the guarantee that it contains the most recent write), and partition tolerance (the system continues to operate despite an arbitrary number of messages being dropped or delayed between nodes).
What part of speech is Brewer's theorem?
Brewer's theorem is a proper noun.

Words near Brewer's theorem in the dictionary

  1. Brewer's mole
  2. brewer's rice
  3. Brewer's rockcress
  4. Brewer's sparrow
  5. Brewer's spruce
  6. Brewer's theorem
  7. brewer's yeast
  8. brewer's yeasts
  9. breweress
  10. breweresses
  11. breweriana

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Brewer's theorem (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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