| / English Dictionary |
ECCENTRICITY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Strange and unconventional behavior
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("eccentricity" is a kind of...):
strangeness; unfamiliarity (unusualness as a consequence of not being well known)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "eccentricity"):
oddity; oddness (eccentricity that is not easily explained)
Derivation:
eccentric (conspicuously or grossly unconventional or unusual)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A circularity that has a different center or deviates from a circular path
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("eccentricity" is a kind of...):
circularity; disk shape (the roundness of a 2-dimensional figure)
Antonym:
concentricity (the quality of having the same center (as circles inside one another))
Derivation:
eccentric (not having a common center; not concentric)
Sense 3
Meaning:
(geometry) a ratio describing the shape of a conic section; the ratio of the distance between the foci to the length of the major axis
Example:
a circle is an ellipse with zero eccentricity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting two and three dimensional shapes
Hypernyms ("eccentricity" is a kind of...):
ratio (the relative magnitudes of two quantities (usually expressed as a quotient))
Domain category:
geometry (the pure mathematics of points and lines and curves and surfaces)
Derivation:
eccentric (not having a common center; not concentric)
Context examples:
In Charon's case, this study finds that a past high eccentricity could have generated large tides, causing friction and surface fractures.
(Cracks in Pluto's moon could indicate it once had an underground ocean, NASA)
In the process, they were able to identify ranges in the disc’s mass, its ‘roundness’ (or eccentricity), and forced gradual shifts in its orientations (or precession rate), which faithfully reproduced the outlier TNO orbits.
(Mystery orbits in outermost reaches of solar system not caused by ‘Planet Nine’, University of Cambridge)
You have some eccentricities, after all, nephew.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Not only was her first-floor flat invaded at all hours by throngs of singular and often undesirable characters but her remarkable lodger showed an eccentricity and irregularity in his life which must have sorely tried her patience.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
There was no sign of any violence, and the water was but two feet deep, so that the jury, having regard to his known eccentricity, brought in a verdict of ‘suicide.’ But I, who knew how he winced from the very thought of death, had much ado to persuade myself that he had gone out of his way to meet it.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The world has outgrown them, and there is no place now for their strange fashions, their practical jokes, and carefully cultivated eccentricities.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I saw, too, that eccentricity was, as my uncle had told me, the fashion; and if the folk upon the Continent look upon us even to this day as being a nation of lunatics, it is no doubt a tradition handed down from the time when the only travellers whom they were likely to see were drawn from the class which I was now meeting.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I would not develop an eccentricity, although he was good enough to point out several by which I might come out of the ruck, as he expressed it, and so catch the attention of the strange world in which he lived.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It was an age of eccentricity, but he had carried his peculiarities to a length which surprised even the out-and-outers by marrying the sweetheart of a famous highwayman when the gallows had come between her and her lover.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It was in Watier’s that night, seated by my uncle on one of the red velvet settees at the side of the room, that I had pointed out to me some of those singular characters whose fame and eccentricities are even now not wholly forgotten in the world.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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