ANOMALY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Anomaly

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/ənˈɑməli/ Listen

noun

Anomaly n. (pl. anomalies)

Deviation from the common rule; an irregularity; anything anomalous. "We are enabled to unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contending principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men." "As Professor Owen has remarked, there is no greater anomaly in nature than a bird that can not fly."

(Astron.)

(a)

The angular distance of a planet from its perihelion, as seen from the sun. This is the true anomaly. The eccentric anomaly is a corresponding angle at the center of the elliptic orbit of the planet. The mean anomaly is what the anomaly would be if the planet's angular motion were uniform.

(b)

The angle measuring apparent irregularities in the motion of a planet.

(Nat. Hist.) Any deviation from the essential characteristics of a specific type.

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Etymology of 'Anomaly'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Anomaly" Quotes from Famous Books

... The weapon could put out vibration which would tear any target to tiny, singing fragments in a few microseconds. It was a complete anomaly which had been in the possession of the Khlorisanu for measureless time. Its origin was mystery, its exact principle of operation a puzzle. But it was easy to duplicate, and it was one of the ...

— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole

... which is not subjected to the principle of inheritance. Mr. Bowman agrees with the general truth of this proposition; which of course does not imply that all malformations are necessarily inherited; this would not even follow if both parents were affected by an anomaly which ...

— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... world he presented the rare spectacle of a man passionate for truth, and unreservedly obedient to the right as he discerned it. The anomaly which made his practical career a failure, lay just here. The right he followed was too often the antithesis of ordinary morality: in his desire to cast away the false and grasp the true, he overshot the mark of prudence. The blending in him of a pure and earnest ...

— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... purposes! Surplus of Nature's dread activity, 10 Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase, Retreating slow, with meditative pause, She formed with restless hands unconsciously. Blank accident! nothing's anomaly! If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state, 15 Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears, The counter-weights!—Thy laughter and thy tears Mean but themselves, each fittest to create And to repay the other! Why rejoices Thy heart with hollow ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... The apparent anomaly vanishes upon the consideration of the profundities of space and time in which the fundamental design of the sidereal universe lies buried. Its composition out of an indefinite number of partial systems is more than probable; but the ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various

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