spherical
/ˈsfɛɹɪkəl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.39 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Of, or pertaining to, spheres.
adj
Of a coordinate system, specifying the location of a point in a plane by using a radius and two angles.
adj
Of or relating to the heavenly orbs, or to the sphere or spheres in which, according to ancient astronomy and astrology, they were set.
adj
Of a multivariate probability distribution, to have a covariance matrix equal to the identity matrix up to a multiplicative factor.
Example Sentences
- "The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone, essentially what today we might term a frameless magnifying glass or plain glass paperweight."
- "Knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance."
- "a spherical Gaussian distribution"
Etymology
English spheric [from Latin sphaericus, from Ancient Greek σφαιρικός (sphairikós)] + -al.
Origin
- Source language: Latin