Embedding
A list of numbers representing meaning, where similar things end up close together.
An embedding turns text, an image, or an item into a vector in a high-dimensional space arranged so that semantic similarity becomes geometric proximity. That single property powers semantic search, recommendations, clustering, and the retrieval half of RAG.
In practice: ‘car’ and ‘automobile’ land near each other; ‘car’ and ‘carpet’ do not, despite sharing letters.