DLyons Mar 19, 2014:

@all There were several correct answers given to this question and one incorrect one. It is abotero's privilege to select any answer she wants.

It is also my privilege to filter her so that I don't see any further questions.

Sergio Kot Mar 14, 2014:

Unless Alberto... Enlightening discussion. And Alberto has a point: "more context, please"... would have been a good idea. Oh! The thirst for knowledge!

ALBERTO PEON Mar 13, 2014:

Unless... The text really deals with social science, sociology and ethics. In this case absorbancia would't make any sense...

ALBERTO PEON Mar 13, 2014:

Lets check definitions absorbancia
1. f. Fís. Medida de la atenuación de una radiación al atravesar una sustancia, que se expresa como el logaritmo de la relación entre la intensidad saliente y la entrante.
This is ABSORBANCE in english

and now for "absorbency"

absorbencia.
1. f. Acción de absorber
This is ABSORBENCY in english, a property of napkins and sanitary pads, among other applications

When you check Google hits for ABSORBANCIA, you get scientific research sources from the very first page, which is not the case for absorbencia

DLyons Mar 13, 2014:

@Albero I'm not sure that it is widely used. For example,
https://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=espectrofotometría &...
produces quite few hits (and the word tends to be in English rather than Spanish).

ALBERTO PEON Mar 13, 2014:

Personally, I had never heard about the word absorbencia before, which obviously does not mean that it doesn't exist, as it happens to be the case… But why not ABSORBANCE?: It exists, iIt matches, it's widely used…What else can we ask it for?

DLyons Mar 13, 2014:

That's very interesting. The RAE then supports my "absorbancia" while denying Henry's "absorbencia" :-) But, scientific usage blithely ignores the RAE and uses both as synonyms. Google Beer-Lambert with both terms and much the same number of hits and same definitions etc appear. Wikipedia (which is trustworthy on Physics), says "En espectrofotometría, la absorbancia (a veces, absorbencia) es definida como ..."

Sergio Kot Mar 13, 2014:

not quite Actually, it is not certain whether it is "absorbancia" or "absorbencia". Absorbancia, according to RAE, refers to radiation (http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=absorbancia), while "absorbencia" has a different definition (http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=absorbencia), one which seems to be closer to the issue at hand, i.e. A1c.