TRIANGLE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Triangle

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/trˈaɪˌæŋgəl/ Listen

noun

Triangle n.

1.

(Geom.) A figure bounded by three lines, and containing three angles. Note: A triangle is either plane, spherical, or curvilinear, according as its sides are straight lines, or arcs of great circles of a sphere, or any curved lines whatever. A plane triangle is designated as scalene, isosceles, or equilateral, according as it has no two sides equal, two sides equal, or all sides equal; and also as right-angled, or oblique-angled, according as it has one right angle, or none; and oblique-angled triangle is either acute-angled, or obtuse-angled, according as all the angles are acute, or one of them obtuse. The terms scalene, isosceles, equilateral, right-angled, acute-angled, and obtuse-angled, are applied to spherical triangles in the same sense as to plane triangles.

2.

(Mus.) An instrument of percussion, usually made of a rod of steel, bent into the form of a triangle, open at one angle, and sounded by being struck with a small metallic rod.

3.

A draughtsman's square in the form of a right-angled triangle.

4.

(Mus.) A kind of frame formed of three poles stuck in the ground and united at the top, to which soldiers were bound when undergoing corporal punishment, now disused.

5.

(Astron.)

(a)

A small constellation situated between Aries and Andromeda.

(b)

A small constellation near the South Pole, containing three bright stars.

Triangle spider (Zool.), a small American spider (Hyptiotes Americanus) of the family Ciniflonidae, living among the dead branches of evergreen trees. It constructs a triangular web, or net, usually composed of four radii crossed by a double elastic fiber. The spider holds the thread at the apex of the web and stretches it tight, but lets go and springs the net when an insect comes in contact with it.

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Etymology of 'Triangle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Triangle" Quotes from Famous Books

... benefactor), he must consider these separate relations, with all the circumstances and situations of the persons, in order to determine the superior duty and obligation; and in order to determine the proportion of lines in any triangle, it is necessary to examine the nature of that figure, and the relation which its several parts bear to each other. But notwithstanding this appearing similarity in the two cases, there is, at bottom, an extreme difference between them. A speculative reasoner ...

— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... the cells included between the short sector (M 4 Comst.) and the upper sector of the triangle (Cu 1, Comst.), and between the quadrilateral (or quadrangle) and the ...

— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... assembly. Undoubtedly Lord Dorchester had underestimated the desire among them for representative institutions. In 1791, therefore, the country west of the Ottawa river, with the exception of a triangle of land at the junction of the Ottawa and the St Lawrence, was erected by the Constitutional Act into a separate province, with the name of Upper Canada; and this province was granted a representative assembly ...

— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... benefit of the unlearned and ignorant, I will first state that a cone is a solid figure described by the revolution of a right-angled triangle about one of the sides containing the right angle, which remains fixed. The fixed side is called the axis of the cone. Conic sections are obtained by cutting the cone by planes. It may easily be proved that if the angle between the cutting plane and the axis be equal to the angle between ...

— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... fitted a different animal, which gives the astonishing result of 596 minor carvings in this one doorway, all of them representing living things, and all of them subsidiary to the larger subjects which they frame. If you measure these tiny sculptures you will find the base of the curved triangle they adorn to average about four inches long, its height being just half that distance. When you look closer at those which are least worn away you will find them clearly enough carved to represent unmistakably in one instance the peculiar reverted eye of a dog gnawing ...

— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

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