permutation: Meaning and Definition of

per•mu•ta•tion

1. the act of permuting or permutating; alteration; transformation.
1. the act of changing the order of elements arranged in a particular order, as abc into acb, bac, etc., or of arranging a number of elements in groups made up of equal numbers of the elements in different orders, as a and b in ab and ba; a one-to-one transformation of a set with a finite number of elements.
2. any of the resulting arrangements or groups. Cf.combination(def. 8b).