ellipse
12
6.6
- noun
- /ɪˈlɪps/
- Specialized
:
elipse
- An ellipse can be formed by cutting a cone at an angle with a plane.
- a small ellipse
- ellipses represent
Examples
-
The rate at which a planet sweeps out area within its orbital ellipse is constant.
Academic text (2003) -
And so the boundary of R is an ellipse described by this equation.
-
What is the area of the ellipse in square units?
-
Each sun revolves in its own ellipse around its common center of mass.
Fiction book (1999) -
Most of the marks cluster within a small ellipse, but there are scattered markings everywhere else.
Academic text (2009) -
A circle with perimeter eight pi is inscribed in an ellipse whose width is twice its height.
-
Many, many centuries later, Kepler used precisely the ellipse and other conic sections to explain how planets actually go around the sun.
-
In this Viking orbiter image, an ellipse running southwest-northeast marks the target site.
Academic text (1994) -
The mathematician explained the properties of a ellipse during the geometry lecture.
-
In her painting, she depicted a beautiful garden arranged in an ellipse.
Synonyms
34
1.0
A closed rounded shape like an egg with no sharp corners
How Elongated
Surface Forms
Etymology
Ellipse comes from the Greek word elleipsis, which means 'a falling short', and it shares the same root as ellipsis, the three dots that show something is 'left out'. Think of an ellipse as an 'almost circle', a circle squeezed or shortened in one direction, so the name helps you remember its slightly flattened shape.