polymorphism (theory, programming) The ability to leave parts of a type in a typed language unspecified. The term has three distinct uses:
* Parametric polymorphism refers to the use of type variables in a strongly typed language. * Overloading, sometimes called ad-hoc polymorphism, means using the same syntax for different types. * object-orientated polymorphism allows a variable to refer to objects whose class is not known at compile time. Last updated: 2014-01-05