Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
a. 1 Having a clean and distinct outline 2 Accurately and precisely described or specified 3 (context mathematics English) Defined in an unambiguous and consistent way: specifically, such that any two objects implied to be identical are indeed identical.
WordNet
adj. having a clean and distinct outline as if precisely cut along the edges; "a finely chiseled nose"; "well-defined features" [syn: chiseled]
accurately stated or described; "a set of well-defined values" [syn: clear] [ant: ill-defined]
Wikipedia
In mathematics, an expression is called well-defined or unambiguous if its definition assigns it a unique interpretation or value. Otherwise, the expression is said to be not well-defined or ambiguous. A function is well-defined if it gives the same result when the representation of the input is changed without changing the value of the input. For instance if f takes real numbers as input, and if f(0.5) does not equal f(1/2) then f is not well-defined (and thus: not a function). The term well-defined is also used to indicate whether a logical statement is unambiguous.
A function that is not well-defined is not the same as a function that is undefined. For example, if f(x) = 1/x, then f(0) is undefined, but this has nothing to do with the question of whether f(x) = 1/x is well-defined. It is; 0 is simply not in the domain of the function.
Usage examples of "well-defined".
However, as in the case of mammoth, well-defined bison kill sites similar to those farther south have not been discovered in eastern Beringia, although a few identifiable bison remains have been found in archeological sites.
European system is, then, very far from being as well-defined as are those of the older nations, like France and Great Britain.
Everything the stickies had done so far indicated that they were moving in a single, cohesive unit, for some well-defined purpose.
There was also the usual assortment of moons, subplanetary orbital objects, and a pair of dense, well-defined asteroid belts.
To sum up, I believe that species come to be tolerably well-defined objects, and do not at any one period present an inextricable chaos of varying and intermediate links: firstly, because new varieties are very slowly formed, for variation is a very slow process, and natural selection can do nothing until favourable variations chance to occur, and until a place in the natural polity of the country can be better filled by some modification of some one or more of its inhabitants.
First, an upper *To an outsider, the tendency among physicians to call certain diseases cryptogenic or idiopathic—and then to discuss them as if they were well-defined, understood clinical entities—may be perplexing.
War is an applied science, with well-defined principles tested in history.
It was not the well-defined muscularity of the body builder but the squat, thick build of the truly strong.
Even powerful and sophisticated search engines, such as Google, return a lot of trash, dead ends, and Error 404's in response to the most well-defined query, Boolean operators and all.
She stared at the long line of his tanned back, well-defined muscles delineating the furrow of his spine.
He remembered the fantastic profusion of plant life, everything sprouting and uncoiling almost while one watched, and yet somehow oddly disciplined, everything fitting into well-defined layers - the towering slender trees bare of branches for seven eighths of their height, then flaring out into great umbrellas of leaves tied together into a tight canopy by a tangle of vines and creepers and epiphytes, and under that a level of shorter, rounder, fuller, more shade-tolerant trees, and a stratum of clumping shrubbery below that, and then the forest floor, dark, mysterious, all but barren, a stark expanse of damp thin spongy soil that bounced jauntily underfoot.
Repeatedly, the resulting disorder has led by well-defined steps to the final static fellahin state.
A domain is a well-defined geographic area bounded by mountain ranges, rivers, seas, or deserts-- druids normally divide a good-sized continent into three or four domains.
He struck the well-defined road, leading out of the west, broad enough for two men to walk along it, and aimed directly into the maze of smooth, granite hills.
In this imagery, the features of a system are structures in phase space that give it a well-defined 'geography'.