Crossword clues for eccentricity
eccentricity
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Eccentricity \Ec`cen*tric"i*ty\, n.; pl. Eccentricities. [Cf. F. excentricit['e].]
The state of being eccentric; deviation from the customary line of conduct; oddity.
(Math.) The ratio of the distance between the center and the focus of an ellipse or hyperbola to its semi-transverse axis.
(Astron.) The ratio of the distance of the center of the orbit of a heavenly body from the center of the body round which it revolves to the semi-transverse axis of the orbit.
(Mech.) The distance of the center of figure of a body, as of an eccentric, from an axis about which it turns; the throw.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1540s, of planetary orbits; 1650s, of persons (an instance of eccentricity); 1794, of persons (a quality of eccentricity); from eccentric (adj.) + -ity or from Modern Latin eccentricitatem, from eccentricus. Related: Eccentricities.
Wiktionary
n. The quality of being eccentric; any eccentric behaviour.
WordNet
n. strange and unconventional behavior
(geometry) a ratio describing the shape of a conic section; the ratio of the distance between the foci to the length of the major axis; "a circle is an ellipse with zero eccentricity"
a circularity that has a different center or deviates from a circular path [ant: concentricity]
Wikipedia
Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to:
- Off- center
- Eccentricity (behavior), odd behavior on the part of a person, as opposed to being "normal"
- Eccentricity (graph theory) of a vertex in a graph
- Eccentricity (mathematics), a parameter associated with every conic section
- Eccentric (mechanism), a wheel that rotates on an axle that is displaced from the focus of the circle described by the wheel
- Eccentricity vector
- Horizontal eccentricity, in vision, degrees of visual angle from the center of the eye
- Eccentric Club, a London gentlemen's club
- Eccentric contraction, the lengthening of muscle fibers
- Eccentric position of a surveying tripod to be able to measure hidden points
- Eccentric training
In mathematics, the eccentricity, denoted e or ɛ, is a parameter associated with every conic section. It can be thought of as a measure of how much the conic section deviates from being circular.
In particular,
- The eccentricity of a circle is zero.
- The eccentricity of an ellipse which is not a circle is greater than zero but less than 1.
- The eccentricity of a parabola is 1.
- The eccentricity of a hyperbola is greater than 1.
Furthermore, two conic sections are similar (identically shaped) if and only if they have the same eccentricity.
In popular usage, eccentricity (also called quirkiness) refers to unusual or odd behavior on the part of an individual. This behavior would typically be perceived as unusual or unnecessary, without being demonstrably maladaptive. Eccentricity is contrasted with " normal" behavior, the nearly universal means by which individuals in society solve given problems and pursue certain priorities in everyday life. People who consistently display benignly eccentric behavior are labeled as "eccentrics".
Usage examples of "eccentricity".
Some of his ministerial associates took offence at his eccentricities, and called on a visit of admonition to the offending clergyman.
Everybody laughed, and, I, much pleased with his eccentricity, began to coax him.
When your favourite poets are Wordsworth, Arnold, and Clare, your novelists Fielding and Sterne, your artists Cotman and Bonington and Girtin, what place had you in this other world of eccentricity and revolt?
MEMOIRS OF JACQUES CASANOVA de SEINGALT 1725-1798 IN LONDON AND MOSCOW, Volume 5c--THE ENGLISH THE ENGLISH CHAPTER X Eccentricity of the English--Castelbajac Count Schwerin--Sophie at School--My Reception at the Betting Club--The Charpillon I passed a night which seemed like a never-ending nightmare, and I got up sad and savage, feeling as if I could kill a man on the smallest provocation.
I provide a welcome bit of eccentricity for the high guilded and perhaps scare the robbers off from stealing their old furniture.
Notwithstanding his boastings, his bare-faced lies, and his manifold eccentricities, I cannot say I thought him offensive.
One soon got used to his eccentricities, but not to his wonderful flow of words which made him the soul of whatever company he was in.
Then twenty-two years ago, after nearly twenty years of ill-tempered confrontation with his fellow theorists, he had, with characteristic abruptness, resigned from his position at Cambridge and retreated to Launde Abbey to pursue his theories without carping interference from lesser minds, his brilliance and loud vocal intolerance of the dry, crusty world endemic to academia creating a media legend of Bohemian eccentricity in the process.
Thomas Marvel as a person of copious, flexible visage, a nose of cylindrical protrusion, a liquorish, ample, fluctuating mouth, and a beard of bristling eccentricity.
Butts, namely, that, as a violent emotion caused by a sudden shock can kill or craze a human being, there is no perversion of the faculties, no prejudice, no change of taste or temper, no eccentricity, no antipathy, which such a cause may not rationally account for.
So I spoke readily enough with the captain of my vessel about the sea compass and the meridian compass, the astrolabe and the cross-staff, but when I discoursed with him upon eccentricity and parallax, he told me in a few words that he was master of ebbs or floods and not of instruments.
Kate Batts had been poor and meek, her eccentricities might have gotten her into trouble.
He entertained Martyn, instead, with a lively account of the eccentricities of Dr.
Out of these questions emerge the concerns of innumerable feminists that postmodernism and deconstruction may very well theorize to an abstraction the lived experience of women or divert attention away from mistreatment in the rush to revel in the more playful eccentricities of theory and ambiguity.
There had been some doubt whether of right he should not have taken Lady Eustace, but it was held by Mrs Dick that her ladyship had somewhat impaired her rights by the eccentricities of her career, and also that she would amiably pardon any little wrongdoing against her of that kind,--whereas Lady Monogram was a person much to be considered.