eccentricity
American Heritage Dictionary:
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ec·cen·tric·i·ty
(ĕk'sĕn-trĭs'ĭ-tē) 
n., pl., -ties.
n., pl., -ties.
- The quality of being eccentric.
- Deviation from the normal, expected, or established.
- An example or instance of eccentric behavior.
- Physics. The distance between the center of an eccentric and its axis.
- Mathematics. The ratio of the distance of any point on a conic section from a focus to its distance from the corresponding directrix. This ratio is constant for any particular conic section.
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eccentricity
Wiley Book of Astronomy:
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eccentricity
A value that defines the shape of an ellipse, such as a planetary orbit. The eccentricity of an ellipse is the ratio of the distance between the foci and the major axis. Equivalently, the eccentricity of an orbit is (ra − rp)/ (ra + rp) where ra is the apoapsis distance and rp is the periapsis distance.
Roget's Thesaurus:
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eccentricity
noun
- Peculiar behavior: idiosyncrasy, peculiarity, quirk, quirkiness, singularity. See usual/unusual.
Antonyms by Answers.com:
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eccentricity
n
Definition: bizarreness, unusualness
Antonyms: commonality, dullness, normality, regularness, standard, uniformity, usual, usualness
Cosmic Lexicon:
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Eccentricity
The measure of the degree of elongation of an ellipse. For example, a circle has an eccentricy of 0, and a parabola (an open figure) an eccentricity of 1.
Devil's Dictionary:
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eccentricity
A cynical view of the world by Ambrose Bierce
n.
A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.
Quotes About:
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Eccentricity
Quotes:
"You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds."
- Henry David Thoreau
"So long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him -- pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?"
- Laurence Sterne
"Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd."
- Dame Edith Sitwell
"Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained."
- John Stuart Mill
"The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time."
- John Stuart Mill
"The lunatic fringe wags the underdog."
- H. L. Mencken
See more famous quotes about Eccentricity
Random House Word Menu:
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categories related to 'eccentricity'
- Branches, Laws, Theories, and Techniques - eccentricity: scale that expresses degree of flattening of elliptical orbit, with zero being circular and one being perfectly elliptical
- Quantities, Relationships, and Operations - eccentricity: number used to define form of a conic section as an ellipse, circle, parabola, or hyperbola
- Agitation, Abnormality, and Instability - eccentricity: bizarre or abnormal, but harmless, activity
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Eccentricity
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Look up eccentric or eccentricity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to:
- Off-center
- Eccentricity (behavior), odd behavior on the part of a person, as opposed to being "normal"
- Eccentricity (graph theory) of a vertex in a graph
- Eccentricity (mathematics), a parameter associated with every conic section
- Eccentric (mechanism), a wheel that rotates on an axle that is displaced from the focus of the circle described by the wheel
- Eccentricity vector
- Horizontal eccentricity, in vision, degrees of visual angle from the center of the eye
- Orbital eccentricity, in astrodynamics, calculated from orbital state vectors as an absolute value of eccentricity vector or using other methods based on orbital energy and angular momentum
- Eccentric anomaly, the angle between the direction of periapsis and the current position of an object on its orbit
- Eccentric Club, a London gentlemen's club
- Eccentric contraction, the lengthening of muscle fibers
- Eccentric, in astronomy, a type of deferent, a circle or sphere used in obsolete astronomical systems to carry a planet around the Earth or Sun
- Eccentric position of a surveying tripod to be able to measure hidden points
- Eccentric Training
See also
- All pages beginning with "eccentric"
- All pages with titles containing "eccentric*"
- Acentric factor, in thermodynamics, the measure of the non-sphericity (acentricity) of molecules
- Acentric fragment, in genetics
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Copyrights:
American Heritage Dictionary
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Wiley Book of Astronomy
Copyright © 2004 by Wiley-Blackwell. Wiley and the Wiley logo are registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. Used here by license. Read more
Roget's Thesaurus
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 byHoughton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Random House Word Menu
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