OVAL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Oval

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/ˈoʊvəl/ Listen

adjective

Oval adj.

Of or pertaining to eggs; done in the egg, or inception; as, oval conceptions. (Obs.)

Having the figure of an egg; oblong and curvilinear, with one end broader than the other, or with both ends of about the same breadth; in popular usage, elliptical.

(Bot.) Broadly elliptical.

Oval chuck (Mech.), a lathe chuck so constructed that work attached to it, and cut by the turning tool in the usual manner, becomes of an oval form.

noun

Oval n. A body or figure in the shape of an egg, or popularly, of an ellipse.

Cassinian oval (Geom.), the locus of a point the product of whose distances from two fixed points is constant; so called from Cassini, who first investigated the curve. Thus, in the diagram, if P moves so that P A.P B is constant, the point P describes a Cassinian oval. The locus may consist of a single closed line, as shown by the dotted line, or of two equal ovals about the points A and B.

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Etymology of 'Oval'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Oval" Quotes from Famous Books

... call on you as I had been intending to do. Next morning I left for this place (near St.-Malo, but I give what they say is the proper address). I want first to beg you to forgive my withholding so long your little oval mirror—it is safe in Paris, and I am vexed at having stupidly forgotten to bring it when I tried to see you. I shall stay here till the autumn sets in, then return to Paris for a few days—the first of which will be the best, if I can see you in the ...

— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... on foot. They wore helmets and rude, flexible armor, formed of iron rings, or of stout leather covered with small plates of iron and other substances. They carried oval-shaped shields. Their chief weapons were the spear, javelin, battle-ax, and sword. The wars of this period were those of the different tribes seeking to get the advantage over each other, or of the ...

— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... of the neck; cut off the pinions and pull out the tail feathers, make a plastic cake of clay or tenacious earth an inch thick and large enough to envelop the bird and cover him with it snugly. Dig an oval pit under the fore-stick, large enough to hold him, and fill it with hot coals, keeping up a strong heat. Just before turning in for the night, clean out the pit, put in the bird, cover with hot embers and coals, keeping ...

— Woodcraft • George W. Sears

... the absorption of Stingaree; and as he peered audaciously over the other's shoulder he put himself in the outlaw's place. An old friend would have lurked in every cut, a friend whom it might well be a painful pleasure to meet again. There were the oval face and the short upper lip of one imperishable type; on the next page one of Punch's Fancy Portraits, with lines underneath which set Stingaree incongruously humming a stave from H.M.S. Pinafore. Mr. Kentish smiled without surprise. The common ...

— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... the time of the treaty of 1858 between Great Britain, the United States, and Japan, which partially opened up the last country to European traders, a very curious system of currency existed in Japan. The most valuable Japanese coin was the kobang, consisting of a thin oval disk of gold about two inches long, and one and a quarter inch wide, weighing two hundred grains, and ornamented in a very primitive manner. It was passing current in the towns of Japan for four silver itzebus, but ...

— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

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