radius

To give a rounded edge to.

Noun

  1. 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. The lighter bone (or fused portion of bone) in the forelimb of an animal.
  3. 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. 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,...
    • 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...
  5. 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...
  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,...
  7. The minimum eccentricity of any vertex, for a given graph.

Origin

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

Forms

radii radiuses

Synonyms

R

Related

radial radiad radiate radiation

Derived

atomic 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

Verb

  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:

Forms

radiuses radiusing radiused

Related

ulna semidiameter