Moiety

In chemistry, a moiety is a specific segment of a molecule. For example, aniline has a phenyl and an amino moiety. Ethidium bromide also has both of these.
In anthropology, moiety is a term used to describe each descent group in a culture which is divided exactly into two descent groups.
In law, moiety means half of something, such as an inheritance.
Octavius Caesar uses the term moiety in William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra after he learns of the death of Antony:

The breaking of so great a thing should make

A greater crack. The round world

Should have shook lions into civil streets

And citizens to their dens. The death of Antony

Is not a single doom; in the name lay

A moiety of the world.

Caesar's message symbolizes the gravity of Antony's death, as it represented the triumph of Rome — and of Western civilization — over Cleopatra and Egypt.

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