Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🤔 Indirectly 🟠 In an oval path
elliptically

elliptically

6.5
Something moves in a long round path like an oval
  • adverb
  • /ɪˈlɪptɪkli/
translation icon : elípticamente
  • It wasn't much in terms of water area, elliptically shaped and maybe a hundred feet long by fifty feet wide.

Examples

  • The garden was designed with flowers planted elliptically around a central fountain.

  • And that's in this case we call it elliptically polarized wave.

  • One elliptically orbits in the habitable zone of liquid.

    Blog text (17)

  • The moon travels around the Earth elliptically, following an oval-shaped path.

  • In her explanation of the concept, she described the orbit of planets elliptically to illustrate their paths.

Surface Forms

elliptically positive

Morphology

elliptically = elliptical (transparent) = elliptical + ly

The adverb is a straightforward derivation from the adjective 'elliptical' meaning 'of the shape of an ellipse'; the adverbial meaning 'in an elliptical shape or path' is directly compositional.

Etymology

Elliptically comes from the word ellipse, which names a stretched circle or 'oval'. So when something moves elliptically, it follows that long, oval path rather than a perfect circle.