The Collaborative International Dictionary
Geometric \Ge`o*met"ric\, Geometrical \Ge`o*met"ric*al\, a. [L. geometricus; Gr. ?: cf. F. g['e]om['e]trique.]
Pertaining to, or according to the rules or principles of, geometry; determined by geometry; as, a geometrical solution of a problem.
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(Art) characterized by simple geometric forms in design and decoration; as, a buffalo hide painted with red and black geometrical designs.
Syn: geometric.
Note: Geometric is often used, as opposed to algebraic, to include processes or solutions in which the propositions or principles of geometry are made use of rather than those of algebr
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Note: Geometrical is often used in a limited or strictly technical sense, as opposed to mechanical; thus, a construction or solution is geometrical which can be made by ruler and compasses, i. e., by means of right lines and circles. Every construction or solution which requires any other curve, or such motion of a line or circle as would generate any other curve, is not geometrical, but mechanical. By another distinction, a geometrical solution is one obtained by the rules of geometry, or processes of analysis, and hence is exact; while a mechanical solution is one obtained by trial, by actual measurements, with instruments, etc., and is only approximate and empirical.
Geometrical curve. Same as Algebraic curve; -- so called because their different points may be constructed by the operations of elementary geometry.
Geometric lathe, an instrument for engraving bank notes, etc., with complicated patterns of interlacing lines; -- called also cycloidal engine.
Geometrical pace, a measure of five feet.
Geometric pen, an instrument for drawing geometric curves, in which the movements of a pen or pencil attached to a revolving arm of adjustable length may be indefinitely varied by changing the toothed wheels which give motion to the arm.
Geometrical plane (Persp.), the same as Ground plane .
Geometrical progression, proportion, ratio. See under Progression, Proportion and Ratio.
Geometrical radius, in gearing, the radius of the pitch circle of a cogwheel.
--Knight.Geometric spider (Zo["o]l.), one of many species of spiders, which spin a geometrical we
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They mostly belong to Epeira and allied genera, as the garden spider. See Garden spider.
Geometric square, a portable instrument in the form of a square frame for ascertaining distances and heights by measuring angles.
Geometrical staircase, one in which the stairs are supported by the wall at one end only.
Geometrical tracery, in architecture and decoration, tracery arranged in geometrical figures.
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Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. 1 Of, or relating to geometry; geometric. 2 (context of a design English) Consisting of lines and simple shapes. 3 (cx of a staircase English) Having the stairs supported by the wall at one end only.
WordNet
Wikipedia
Usage examples of "geometrical".
The aisle windows are, like those of the clerestory, of the geometrical Decorated style, but of an earlier and simpler, uniform, design.
They comprised astronomical kaleidoscopes exhibiting the twelve constellations of the zodiac from Aries to Pisces, miniature mechanical orreries, arithmetical gelatine lozenges, geometrical to correspond with zoological biscuits, globemap playing balls, historically costumed dolls.
This remarkable artefact consisted of an elemental chunk of bedrock, grey and crystalline, carved into a complex geometrical form of curves and angles, incised niches and external buttresses, surmounted at the centre by a stubby vertical prong.
He loved fantastically shaped beds and geometrical patterns, and geraniums and lobelias and calceolarias were still dear to his antiquated soul.
Each division is filled with a geometrical pattern of two panels, each panel ending in a trefoil, with a circular trefoil in the head of each division, and a crocketed gable, terminating in a rich finial above it.
Gazzaniga of the State University of New York at Stony Brook suggests that this hemispheric specialization occurs because language is developed in the left hemisphere before the child acquires substantial competence in manipulative skills and geometrical visualization.
Among the striking developments are the learning machines such as the perceptrons and the heuristic programs for playing games, proving mathematical theorems, analyzing geometrical figures.
The group of the visualizers, who thought in geometrical terms, like the ancient Greeks, and the group of the nonvisualizers who preferred algebra and imageless abstractions.
The worthy friend of Athanasius, the worthy antagonist of Julian, he bravely wrestled with the Arians and Polytheists, and though he affected the rigor of geometrical demonstration, his commentaries revealed the literal and allegorical sense of the Scriptures.
The walls were hung with cloths painted in bedlamite scarlets and purples and oranges--not the rude figures of men and animals common on the teepees, but a geometrical nightmare of interwoven cubes and circles.
Every phrase in his letter seemed, to Bernard, to march in stout-soled walking-boots, and nothing could better express his attachment to the process of reasoning things out than this proposal that his friend should come and make a chemical analysis--a geometrical survey--of the lady of his love.
The growth was geometrical: two, four, eight, sixteen, a doubling every time, rapidly exponentiating away to large numbers, astronomical numbers.
Jack contributed a section that constantly mutated from one symmetrical geometrical form to the next, representing the primacy of sheer organization in the evolving universe, the antientropic forces that organize things into organic structures, expressed in the great Overstructure by a series of sections that constantly mutated from one symmetrical geometric form to another, each a variation of the last.
So in the theorem of the Parallelogram of Velocities we have a strictly geometrical theorem, whose content is in the narrowest sense kinematic.
I am tempted to-day to go farther, and to maintain that, the larger, the sublimer, your subject is, the more impertinent rhyme becomes to it: and that this impertinence increases in a sort of geometrical progression as you advance from monosyllabic to dissyllabic and on to trisyllabic rhyme.