What is "semielliptical"

Usage examples of "semielliptical".

After what seemed to be a very long while, there was a scrambling noise and a semielliptical bite out of the edge of the nearest hut lid lifted cautiously like the door to the tunnel of a trap-door spider, and a face peered upward.

Hundreds of gamblers—pretty young women, sweet-faced grandmothers, men in jeans and decoratively stitched Western shirts, retirement-age men in expensive but tacky leisure outfits, a few guys in three-piece suits, salesmen, doctors, mechanics, secretaries, Americans from all of the Western states, junketeers from the East Coast, Japanese tourists, a few Arab men—sat at the semielliptical blackjack tables, pushing money and chips forward, sometimes taking back their winnings, eagerly grabbing the cards that were dealt from the five-deck shoes, each reacting in one of several predict-able ways: Some players squealed with delight.