Search the Dictionary

A plane figure of eleven sides and angles.

A polygon or plane figure with nine sides and nine angles; a nonagon.

Any tabular statement of the assigned places of a heavenly body, as a planet or comet, on several successive days.

One who studies the daily motions and positions of the planets. Howell.

e of a greater circle; or a small circle, whose center, being fixed in the deferent of a planet, is carried along with the deferent, and yet, by its own peculiar motion, carries the body of the planet fastened to it round its proper center. The schoolmen were like astronomers which did feign eccentries, and epicycles,…

The date at which a planet or comet has a longitude or position.

A circle around whose circumference a planet or the center of ann epicycle was conceived to move uniformly; -- called also eccentric equator.

parent time. -- Equation of the center (Astron.), the difference between the place of a planet as supposed to move uniformly in a circle, and its place as moving in an ellipse. -- Equations of condition (Math.), equations formed for deducing the true values of certain quantities from others on which they depend, when…

The great circle of the celestial sphere, coincident with the plane of the earth's equator; -- so called because when the sun is in it, the days and nights are of equal length; hence called also the equinoctial, and on maps, globes, etc., the equinoctial line. Equator of the sun or of a planet (Astron.), the great circ…

Wandering; deviating from an appointed course, or from a direct path; roving. Seven planets or errant stars in the lower orbs of heaven. Sir T. Browne.

e; roving about without a fixed destination; wandering; moving; -- hence, applied to the planets as distinguished from the fixed stars. The earth and each erratic world. Blackmore.

Exercising its highest influence; -- said of a planet. [Obs.] Chaucer.

That place of a planet in the zodiac in which it was supposed to exert its strongest influence.

Away from the mesial plane of the body; lateral. External angles. (Geom.) See under Angle.

en from one point, or which is presented toward a certain direction; one of the bounding planes of a solid; as, a cube has six faces.

A little face; a small, plane surface; as, the facets of a diamond. [Written also facette.]

r bent like a sickle; as, a falcate leaf; a falcate claw; -- said also of the moon, or a planet, when horned or crescent- formed.

To interrupt the continuity of (rock strata) by displacement along a plane of fracture; -- chiefly used in the p.p.; as, the coal beds are badly faulted.

To turn to a horizontal plane; -- said of oars. The feathering oar returns the gleam. Tickell. Stopping his sculls in the air to feather accurately. Macmillan's Mag.

block (Naut.), a long tackle block having two sheaves of different diameters in the same plane, instead of side by side as in a common double block. Knight. -- Fiddle bow, fiddlestick. -- Fiddle fish (Zoöl.), the angel fish. -- Fiddle head, an ornament on a ship's bow, curved like the volute or scroll at the head of…