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ing to its direction, or mode of action, as thrust or pressure, pull or tension, shear or tangential stress. Rankine. Stress is the mutual action between portions of matter. Clerk Maxwell.

directions; -- said of surfaces which in all directions around any point bend away from a tangent plane toward the same side, as the surface of a sphere; -- opposed to anticlastic. Sir W. Thomson.

The quality or state of being tangent; a contact or touching.

To be tangent to. See Tangent, a.

A curve such that the part of the tangent between the point of tangency and a given straight line is constant; -- so called because it was conceived as described by the motion of one end of a tangent line as the other end was drawn along the given line.

re employed in solving the different cases of plane and spherical trigonometry, as sines, tangents, secants, and the like. These lines, or the lengths of them, are trigonometrical functions of the arcs and angles to which they belong. -- Trigonometrical survey. See under Survey.

more streams of water, conducted so as to strike against the floats in the direction of a tangent to the cylinder.

A line, within a rotating fluid, whose tangent at every point is the instantaneous axis of rotation as that point of the fluid.

Art of preparing sections (transverse, tangential, or radial) of wood, esp. by means of a microtome, for microscopic examination.