radius

noun, verb — 8 senses

radius

noun

/ˈɹeɪ.di.əs/

Etymology Borrowed from Latin radius (“ray”). Doublet of ray.

7 senses
  1. 1The long bone in the forearm, on the side of the thumb.
  2. 2The lighter bone (or fused portion of bone) in the…
  3. 3One of the major veins of the insect wing, between the…
  4. 4A line segment between any point of a circle or sphere…
  5. 5The length of this line segment.
  6. 6Anything resembling a radius, such as the spoke of a…
  7. 7The minimum eccentricity of any vertex, for a given graph.
1

Anatomy, Medicine, Sciences The long bone in the forearm, on the side of the thumb.

  • It is also obvious, and proved by experiment, that the rotatory motions observed in the hand proceed from the rotatory motions of the radius.1808, John Barclay, The Muscular Motions of the Human Body, →OCLC, page 396:
2

Biology, Natural sciences, Zoology The lighter bone (or fused portion of bone) in the forelimb of an animal.

3

Biology, Entomology, Natural sciences One of the major veins of the insect wing, between the subcosta and the media; the vein running along the costal edge of the discal cell.

4

Geometry, Mathematics, Sciences A line segment between any point of a circle or sphere and its center.

  • Fatima claims to have visited all the bars within a five-mile radius of her Manhattan apartment.
  • We start with spherical geometries. The two geometries on spheres of radiuses R₁ and R₂ are obviously identical if R₁ = R₂; moreover, the converse also holds.1994, Viacheslav V. Nikulin, Igor R. Shafarevich, translated by Miles Reid, Geometries and Groups, Springer, page 194:
1 more example
  • The velocity dispersions of early- and late-type galaxies in compact groups change little with groupcentric radius; the radii sampled are less than 100~h#123;-1#125; kpc, smaller than the radii typically sampled by members of massive clusters of galaxies.2016, Jubee Sohn, Ho Seong Hwang, Margaret J. Geller, Antonaldo Diaferio, Kenneth J. Rines, Myung Gyoon Lee, Gwang-Ho Lee, “Compact Groups of Galaxies with Complete Spectroscopic Redshifts in the Local Universe”, in JKAS, volume 2015:
5

Geometry, Mathematics, Sciences The length of this line segment.

  • This contribution reduces with increasing distance p from the emitting surface element dA, due to conservation of energy, as the wave energy distributed across the spherical wave front remains constant, while the radius increases during ...1998, Dieter Schuocker, Handbook of the Eurolaser Academy, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 51:
6

Anything resembling a radius, such as the spoke of a wheel, the movable arm of a sextant, or one of the radiating lines of a spider's web.

  • […] I can do more with a Quadrant, Sextant or Octant, of 1 foot Radius, furniſhed with Teleſcopical Sights and Screws, then ^([sic]) can poſſibly be done with any other Inſtrument, furniſhed only with Common Sights, though 10, 20, 30, nay threeſcore foot Radius; […]1674, Robert Hooke, Animadversions on the Firſt Part of the Machina Coelestis of the […] Aſtronomer Johannes Hevelius […] , page 43:
7

Graph theory, Mathematics, Sciences The minimum eccentricity of any vertex, for a given graph.

Synonyms
R
Derived terms
36 termsatomic radius, blast radius, Bohr radius, circumradius, covalent radius, Debye radius, distal radius, Earth radius, Einstein radius, equiradiate, exradius, gyradius, gyroradius, Hill radius, hydraulic radius, hyperradius, inradius, interradius, ionic radius, metallic radius, potato radius, radian, radion, radius arm, radius bar, radius of action, radius of convergence, radius of curvature, radius of gyration, radius rod, radius vector, Roche radius, Schwarzschild radius, sight radius, triradius, van der Waals radius
Related terms
radial, radiad, radiate, radiation

radius

verb

Etymology Borrowed from Latin radius (“ray”). Doublet of ray.

1

To give a rounded edge to.

  • A comfortable grip is ensured by smoothing the surface of the handle and radiusing the edge.2014, Anil Mital, Anoop Desai, Anand Subramanian, Product Development, page 358:
Related terms
ulna, semidiameter

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.