The Collaborative International Dictionary
Gibbous \Gib"bous\, a. [Cf. F. gibbeux. See Gibbose.]
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Swelling by a regular curve or surface; protuberant; convex; as, the moon is gibbous between the half-moon and the full moon.
The bones will rise, and make a gibbous member.
--Wiseman. Hunched; hump-backed. [Obs.]
--Sir T. Browne. -- Gib"bous*ly, adv. -- Gib"bous*ness, n.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1400, "bulging, convex," from Late Latin gibbus "hunchbacked," from Latin gibbus "hump, hunch," of uncertain origin. Of the moon from early 15c.; also used from 15c. of hunchbacks.
Wiktionary
a. 1 Characterized by convex; protuberant. 2 (context astronomy English) Phase of moon or planet between first quarter and full or between full and last quarter. 3 humpback.
WordNet
adj. characteristic of or suffering from kyphosis, an abnormality of the vertebral column [syn: crookback, crookbacked, humped, humpbacked, hunchback, hunchbacked, kyphotic]
(used of the moon) more than half full [syn: gibbose]
Usage examples of "gibbous".
A LONG TIME THERE was a photo of the gibbous Earth rising over the horizon of the Moon.
My gibbous Earth is a green book to the clerks at the photo banks, I suppose.
I remember that gibbous Earth quite naturally while only one scrap of paper exists to suggest it ever inhabited the natural world.
I saw a picture of a swirling blue Earth suspended in its gibbous phase over a sea-rough greenish moonscape.
Once when I was more or less exhausted of this activity, she started talking about the gibbous Earth and sea-Moon.
Did some time-traveler rearrange Apollo 8 events so the photo of the gibbous Earth and sea-green Moon never got taken?
Certain memories are monuments, and my note about the Poseidon Moon, which antedates even my acquaintance with Larry, is a monument clearly implying that the gibbous Earth and the sealike Moon existed before I knew Larry, or the nuclear power industry, or Cindy, or anything this side of my first post-adolescent coming of consciousness, when that photo was first published.
Overhead, the gibbous moon shone bright at zenith while the stars sank into the deep blue of a predawn sky.
Zephyr had been executed by the light of a gibbous moon, as was Halruaan custom.
If she is condemned, she will be executed under the light of a gibbous moon.
I watched Mercury and Venus follow the sun into the west, and I remember that the moon rose late, it was past full, a waning gibbous, the worst of shapes.
And it was the high-priest Gnai-Kah who first saw the shadows that descended from the gibbous moon into the lake, and the damnable green mists that arose from the lake to meet the moon and to shroud in a sinister haze the towers and the domes of fated Sarnath.
That idol, enshrined in the high temple at Ilarnek, was subsequently worshipped beneath the gibbous moon throughout the land of Mnar.
Moreover, so far as esthetic theory was involved, if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulosity as the specter of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against nature?
The sun had been gone quite some time and the gibbous moon was high when he was left to sleep at last in the room that he shared with six others.