Kaplan Nursing Entrance Practice Exam 2025 – The All-in-One Guide to Exam Success!

Electronegativity is a measure of an atom's ability to attract and hold onto bonding electrons within a chemical bond. When the electronegativity of an atom is greater, it signifies that the atom has a stronger ability to attract electrons towards itself. This is crucial in understanding how atoms interact and form bonds with one another; the higher the electronegativity, the more it can influence the shared electrons in a bond, often resulting in a polar covalent bond if the difference in electronegativity between two atoms is significant.

In contrast, options discussing malleability and atomic weight are not relevant to the concept of electronegativity. An atom's tendency to lose electrons relates to its ionization energy, and while there could be correlations in certain scenarios, this does not define electronegativity. Therefore, the increase in electronegativity directly correlates with the atom's ability to attract bonding electrons, making it the most accurate choice among the options provided.