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elliptical
Use
Elliptical
in a sentence
el·lip·ti·cal
/
ɪˈlɪp
tɪ
kəl
/
Show Spelled
[
ih-
lip
-ti-k
uh
l
]
Show IPA
adjective
Also,
el·lip·tic.
1.
pertaining to or having the form of an
ellipse
.
2.
pertaining to or marked by grammatical ellipsis.
3.
(of speech or writing) expressed with extreme or excessive economy; relieved of irrelevant matter:
to converse in elliptical
sentences
.
4.
(of a style of speaking or writing) tending to be ambiguous, cryptic, or obscure:
an elliptical prose that is difficult to translate.
noun
5.
Astronomy
,
elliptical galaxy
.
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00:10
Elliptical
is always a great word to know.
So is
Leo
. Does it mean:
So is
Polaris
. Does it mean:
So is
meteor
. Does it mean:
the Lion, a zodiacal constellation between Virgo and Cancer, containing the bright star Regulus
a number of heavenly bodies associated and acting together according to certain natural laws
one fourth of the moon's monthly revolution
the polestar or North Star, a star of the second magnitude close to the north pole of the heavens, in the constellation Ursa Minor
used to designate the brightest star in a constellation
a transient fiery streak in the sky produced by a meteoroid passing through the earth's atmosphere also called a shooting star or bolide
LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...
Origin:
1650–60;
<
Greek
elleiptik
(
ós
) defective (see
ellipsis
,
-tic
) +
-al
1
Related forms
el·lip·ti·cal·ness,
noun
non·el·lip·tic,
adjective
non·el·lip·ti·cal,
adjective
non·el·lip·ti·cal·ly,
adverb
o·ver·el·lip·ti·cal,
adjective
o·ver·el·lip·ti·cal·ly,
adverb
sub·el·lip·tic,
adjective
sub·el·lip·ti·cal,
adjective
un·el·lip·ti·cal,
adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
Cite This Source
|
Link To
elliptical
Collins
World English Dictionary
elliptical
(ɪˈlɪptɪk
ə
l)
—
adj
1.
relating to or having the shape of an ellipse
2.
relating to or resulting from ellipsis
3.
of speech, literary style, etc
a. very condensed or concise, often so as to be obscure or ambiguous
b. circumlocutory or long-winded
usage The use of
elliptical
to mean
circumlocutory
should be avoided as it may be interpreted wrongly as meaning
condensed
or
concise
el'liptically
—
adv
el'lipticalness
—
n
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source
Etymonline
Word Origin & History
elliptical
1650s, elliptic in shape, from
elliptic
. Grammatical sense of missing essential words or phrases is recorded from 1778 (see
ellipsis
).
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Cite This Source
Example sentences
The head is oval or
elliptical
, but flattened, so that when viewed in profile
it is pear-shaped.
Many of the other galaxies are denser and egg-shaped, or
elliptical
, and are
largely filled with old stars.
She held an imaginary pen in her right hand, and it carved wild
elliptical
arcs
in the air, as if she were shaking a thermometer.
You'd think no one has ever heard of the inverse square, not to mention the
elliptical
orbit.
However, the talk is infrequent and
elliptical
, and the film proceeds in a style that is stupefyingly drab and slow.
Glossy, oval to
elliptical
leaves more add to my plant list.
And metastable isomers differ from normal atoms in having a nucleus which is football shaped or
elliptical
rather than round.
The truth is that the
elliptical
galaxy in this case is only a temporary structure.
Unlike spiral and
elliptical
galaxies, irregular galaxies lack any appearance of organized structure.
Sixty percent of current satellites, including those in
elliptical
and other orbits not listed here, are used for communications.
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Matching Quote
"Speech is after all only a system of gestures, having the peculiarity that each gesture produces a characteristic sound, so that it can be perceived through the ear as well as through the eye. Listening to a speaker instead of looking at him tends to make us think of speech as essentially a system of sounds; but it is not; essentially it is a system of gestures made with the lungs and larynx, and the cavities of the mouth and nose. We get still farther away from the fundamental facts about speech when we think of it as something that can be written and read, forgetting that what writing, in our clumsy notations, can represent is only a small part of the spoken sound, where pitch and stress, tempo and rhythm, are almost entirely ignored. But even a writer or reader, unless the words are to fall flat or meaningless, must speak them soundlessly to himself. The written or printed book is only a series of hints, as
elliptical
as the neumes of Byzantine music, from which the reader thus works out for himself the speech-gestures which alone have the gift of expression."
-R.G. Collingwood
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