SPHERICAL

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Having the shape of a sphere or ball

Example:

little globular houses like mud-wasp nests

Synonyms:

ball-shaped; global; globose; globular; orbicular; spheric; spherical

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

circular; round (having the shape or form of a circle)

Derivation:

sphere (any spherically shaped artifact)

sphere (a three-dimensional closed surface such that every point on the surface is equidistant from the center)

sphericalness (the roundness of a 3-dimensional object)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Of or relating to spheres or resembling a sphere

Example:

spherical geometry

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Antonym:

nonspherical (not spherical)

Pertainym:

sphere (a solid figure bounded by a spherical surface (including the space it encloses))

Derivation:

sphere (any spherically shaped artifact)

Credits

Context examples:

A small spherical structure or mass.

(Bead, NCI Thesaurus)

NPG’s molecules, composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, are nearly spherical and interact with each other only weakly.

(Green material for refrigeration identified, University of Cambridge)

The new research also identified at least eight large, spherical clumps of stars called globular clusters that were brought into the Milky Way by the Sausage galaxy.

(The Gaia Sausage: the major collision that changed the Milky Way, University of Cambridge)

A genus of spherical, Gram-positive bacteria in the phylum Actinobacteria.

(Micrococcus, NCI Thesaurus)

A species of enveloped and spherical viruses with a capsid with T=16 icosahedral symmetry and surrounded by amorphous tegument, in the Herpesviridae family and Simplexvirus genus.

(Human Herpesvirus 2, NCI Thesaurus)

The porosity also helps explain their shape: Rather than being spherical, they are blobby and ravioli-like, with material stuck around their equators.

(NASA's Cassini Finds Saturn's Rings Coat Tiny Moons, NASA)

Because the black hole modeled in this visualization is spherical, the photon ring looks nearly circular and identical from any viewing angle.

(NASA Visualization Shows a Black Hole’s Warped World, NASA)

A family of single-stranded, non-segmented, positive-sense RNA viruses with a hexagonal/spherical capsid and no envelope.

(Calicivirus, NCI Thesaurus)

A measurement of the Howell-Jolly bodies (spherical, blue-black condensed DNA inclusions within the body of a red blood cell that appear under Wright-stain) in a biological specimen.

(Howell-Jolly Body Measurement, NCI Thesaurus/CDISC)

A genus of enveloped, spherical viruses in the family Bunyaviridae.