What is meant by the term 'Electronegativity'

Electronegativity, as denoted by the Greek letter 'chi', is the tendency of an atom to attract bonding electrons within a covalent bond. Let us unravel what this means. The term electronegativity may only be applied to two atoms joined by a covalent bond because atoms joined by an ionic bond can only have an integer charge (such as Na+ and Cl- present in common salt with a full positive and negative charge respectively). However a covalent bond is the sharing of electrons without creating an integer charge because both atoms involved have a partial charge instead. Thus a partial charge gives rise to polarity which induces an electric dipole moment causing an attractive force to exist between the electrons of the atoms and so leading to this concept.