monade

Noun

monad (plural monads)

1. One thing, one being, one item.
2. A group of entities or items treated as one entity.
3. An ultimate atom, or simple, unextended point; something ultimate and indivisible.
   • Hence Leibnitz, who looked upon things as noumena, after denying them everything like external relation, and therefore also composition or combination, declared that all substances, even the component parts of matter, were simple substances with powers of representation, in one word, monads.1787, Immanuel Kant, translated by John Meiklejohn, The Critique of Pure Reason, published 1855
4. A single individual (such as a pollen grain) that is free from others, not united in a group.
5. (dated) A single-celled organism. (See Monas.)
6. A monoid object in the category of endofunctors of a fixed category.

See all 7 meanings of monad