CURVE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Curve

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/kərv/ Listen

noun

Curve n.

A bending without angles; that which is bent; a flexure; as, a curve in a railway or canal.

(Geom.) A line described according to some low, and having no finite portion of it a straight line.

Axis of a curve. See under Axis.

Curve of quickest descent. See Brachystochrone.

Curve tracing (Math.), the process of determining the shape, location, singular points, and other peculiarities of a curve from its equation.

Plane curve (Geom.), a curve such that when a plane passes through three points of the curve, it passes through all the other points of the curve. Any other curve is called a curve of double curvature, or a twisted curve.

verb

Curve v. t. (past & past part. curved; pres. part. curving) To bend; to crook; as, to curve a line; to curve a pipe; to cause to swerve from a straight course; as, to curve a ball in pitching it.

Curve v. i. To bend or turn gradually from a given direction; as, the road curves to the right.

adjective

Curve adj. Bent without angles; crooked; curved; as, a curve line; a curve surface.

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Etymology of 'Curve'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Curve" Quotes from Famous Books

... Hospital Mountain, where the enemy's headquarters lay, great watch-fires were blazing through the thick, snow-laden air. Now and then the glare of a mortar shone suddenly out, followed after a few seconds by the thundering explosion. Then a fiery curve traced itself against the sky, the end of which advanced hissing towards the city, and at last burst somewhere among the houses. Such was the picture that presented itself to the eyes of the two children when they reached the Peter Gate ...

— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... breaks the furrow slice. The degree to which the mouldboard pulverizes depends on the steepness of its slant upward and the abruptness of its curve sidewise. The steeper it is and the more abrupt the curve, the greater is its pulverizing power. A steep, abrupt mouldboard is adapted to light soils and to the heavier soils when they are comparatively dry. This kind of a plow ...

— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... and in the curve of her lips was a strange provocation. She seemed to have lost her deference. Her breast rose and fell as though with secret anger; she drew her hands inwards from their rest on the arms of her chair ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... out to the opening by the water, she began to talk rather fast about the prettiness of the view, and to point out the bridge, and the mills, and the shadow of East Hill upon the water, and the curve of the opposite shore, and the dip of the shrubs and their arched reflections. She seemed quite determined to have all ...

— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... approach of a wire forming a closed curve to a second wire through which a voltaic current flowed was then shown by Faraday to be sufficient to arouse in the neutral wire an induced current, opposed in direction to the inducing current; the withdrawal of the wire also generated a current having the same direction as the inducing current; ...

— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

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