matrix

Noun

1. The cavity or mold in which anything is formed.
2. The womb.
   • upon conception the inward orifice of the matrix exactly closeth, so that it commonly admitteth nothing after […] - 1650, Thomas Browne, “Enquiries into Vulgar”, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […]...
   • In very rare cases, when the matrix just goes on pegging away automatically, the doctor can take advantage of that and ease out the second brat who then can be considered to be, say, three minutes younger […] - 1969,...
3. The metaphorical place where something is made, formed, or given birth.
   • When it is remembered that ritual dancing was the matrix out of which the Drama sprang, and further that the drama in its inception (as still to-day in India) was an affair of religion and was acted in, or in connection...
4. The material or tissue in which more specialized structures are embedded.
5. An extracellular matrix, the material or tissue between the cells of animals or plants.
6. Part of the mitochondrion.
7. The medium in which bacteria are cultured.
8. A table of data.
9. A rectangular arrangement of numbers or terms having various uses such as transforming coordinates in geometry, solving systems of linear equations in linear algebra and representing graphs in graph theory.
   • Theorem (7.5.2) then says that every positive semidefinite matrix is a convex combination of matrices that lie on extreme rays. - 1987, [1985], Roger A. Horn, Charles R. Johnson, Matrix Analysis, Paperback edition,...
   • Check that the #92;mathcal#123;A#125;(#92;mathcal#123;D#125;)² in the example is itself the adjacency matrix of the indicated digraph: - 2003, Robert A. Liebler, Basic Matrix Algebra with Algorithms and Applications,...
   • 2007, Gerhard Kloos, Matrix Methods for Optical Layout, SPIE Press, page 25, The matrix describing the reflection at a plane mirror can be obtained by taking the matrix for reflection at a spherical reflector and...
10. A two-dimensional array.
11. Alternative letter-case form of Matrix; a controlled environment or situation in which people behave in ways that conform to pre-determined roles.
    • He'd operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high, a byproduct of youth and proficiency, jacked into a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was...
    • Mari Otsu, a 25-year-old Japanese-Hawaiian artist, tells me she was “desperately lonely” while she was studying at New York University, when she “realised that [she]^([sic]) was in the matrix”. I ask her what she means....
12. A grid-like arrangement of electronic components, especially one intended for information coding, decoding or storage.
    • Any type of core or diode matrix used to derive the decoding of these codes would amount to a rather large volume of terminals for just the 17,500 terminals alone. - 1949, Proceedings of the Association of American...
    • The transistor matrix in the encoder supplies the sequential gates. - 1959, John Millar Carroll, Modern Transistor Circuits:
    • A transistor-diode matrix is composed of vertical and horizontal wires with a transistor at each intersection. - 1962, Burroughs Corporation, Digital Computer Principles: