The Collaborative International Dictionary
Reciprocate \Re*cip"ro*cate\ (r[-e]*s[i^]p"r[-o]*k[=a]t), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Reciprocated (r[-e]*s[i^]p"r[-o]*k[=a]`t[e^]d); p. pr. & vb. n. Reciprocating.] [L. reciprocatus, p. p. of reciprocare. See Reciprocal.] To move forward and backward alternately; to recur in vicissitude; to act interchangeably; to alternate.
One brawny smith the puffing bellows plies,
And draws and blows reciprocating air.
--Dryden.
Reciprocating engine, a steam, air, or gas engine, etc., in which the piston moves back and forth; -- in distinction from a rotary engine, in which the piston travels continuously in one direction in a circular path.
Reciprocating motion (Mech.), motion alternately backward and forward, or up and down, as of a piston rod.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"moving back and forth," 1690s, present participle adjective from reciprocate (v.). Specifically of machines by 1822.
Wiktionary
That moves backwards and forwards. v
(present participle of reciprocate English)
WordNet
adj. moving alternately backward and forward [syn: reciprocatory]
Wikipedia
Usage examples of "reciprocating".
The sovereign is pleased to gratify her people by going among them and reciprocating courtesies.
Then it dawned on him that the thing on the other side of the hedge was only a robed assemblage of ribs and femurs and vertebrae if viewed from one point of view but, if looked at slightly differently, was equally just a complexity of sparging arms and reciprocating levers that had been covered by a tarpaulin which was now blowing off.
As we went away, I heard Madame Rupprecht and Monsieur de la Tourelle reciprocating civil speeches with might and main, from which I found out that the French gentleman was coming to call on us the next day.
It was intended to replace the Sikorsky H-19 and H-34, which had a reciprocating gasoline engineĊ½.
There were two sets of the reciprocating kind, one working each of the wing propellers through a four-cylinder triple expansion, direct acting inverted engine.
A reciprocating engine was a collection of miniature heat engines using (in a basically inefficient cycle) a small percentage of an exothermic chemical reaction, a reaction which was started and stopped every split second.
The engineer opened the throttle, and the reciprocating engine started to chug.
I havent tried it yet, but it should be possible to run a reciprocating engine without fuel, by bleeding off the gravitic moment of alternate cylinders.
He was snoring with the steady pounding of a steam-powered reciprocating engine.
Thus, in the recent past we have seen new tricks that employ the reciprocating engine, the telephone, electricity, and one remarkable effect memorably created with Dr Warble's smoke-bomb toy.
He waited and General Wheeler stalked past him, elbows and knees stiff as the linkages of a reciprocating engine.
Pitt began probing around the maze of steam pipes leading from the obsolete old steam reciprocating engines and boilers.
He had been around machinery long enough to know that the excess steam from the ship's idle reciprocating engines was blowing off through the bypass valves.
She weighed 46,000 tons, and her reciprocating engines and Parsons-type turbines could generate over fifty thousand horsepower and speed the ship over twenty knots.
Shortly before dawn an odd droning rasping sound was heard in the distance, which Aillas recognized and identified: the voice of the sawmill, where heavy steel blades ten feet in length were driven up and down in reciprocating motion by the power of a waterwheel, to cut planks from pine and cedar logs carted down from the high Teach tac Teach by timber-cutters.