simplex
/ˈsɪmˌplɛks/
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.97 in modern English
Meaning
adj
Of an eye: (supposedly) having pigment on only the posterior surface of the iris and not the anterior surface, and thus appearing blue; this was later found to be inaccurate, as eye colour is due to the amount of pigment in the anterior surface of the iris; also, of eye pigmentation: present only on the posterior surface of the iris; and of a person: having eyes with this form of pigmentation.
adj
Of a circuit or device: involving signals which travel in one direction at a time; unidirectional.
adj
Of a polyploid organism: having one dominant allele at a given locus on all homologous chromosomes.
adj
Synonym of heterozygous (“of an organism: having two different alleles in a given gene”).
Archaic; Obsolete
adj
Of a word: having no (derivational) affixes; simple, monomorphemic, uncompounded.
adj
Of an apartment (or, sometimes, another type of property): having only one floor or storey; single-storey.
noun
A generalization of a triangle or tetrahedron to an arbitrary dimension; more accurately, the convex hull of n+1 affinely independent points in n-dimensional space.
Example Sentences
- "The word weak is a simplex. Its derivative weaken is not."
- "The question is: is 139. [“Priexal Vanja. ‘arrived Vanya’”] a simplex or is it a cleft structure in which all 'superfluous' constituents were deleted. […] The only indication that 139. is a simplex is the sentence intonation and the absence of a break between the verb and the subject."
Etymology
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈsɪmˌplɛks/
- British English: /ˈsɪmplɛks/