ellipse
An ellipse is a closed-plane curve that results from the intersection of a plane cutting through a cone. In other words, it’s an oval.
This is a word you'll probably see in geometry class, though it's a shape you can find all over the place. An ellipse is a closed curve that never made it around to a circle. If one thing travels around another in the shape of an ellipse — like the earth around the sun — it has an elliptical orbit. The plural for both ellipse and ellipsis is ellipses — so be careful not to mix up your ovals with your dots.
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a closed plane curve resulting from the intersection of a circular cone and a plane cutting completely through it“the sums of the distances from the foci to any point on an ellipse is constant”synonyms: ovaltypes:circleellipse in which the two axes are of equal length; a plane curve generated by one point moving at a constant distance from a fixed pointcircle of curvature, osculating circlethe circle that touches a curve (on the concave side) and whose radius is the radius of curvaturecircleta small circleequatora circle dividing a sphere or other surface into two usually equal and symmetrical partsepicyclea circle that rolls around (inside or outside) another circle; generates an epicycloid or hypocycloidtype of:conic, conic section(geometry) a curve generated by the intersection of a plane and a circular cone
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Vocabulary lists containing ellipse
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