Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The quality of being eccentric.
- n. Deviation from the normal, expected, or established.
- n. An example or instance of eccentric behavior.
- n. Physics The distance between the center of an eccentric and its axis.
- n. Mathematics The ratio of the distance of any point on a conic section from a focus to its distance from the corresponding directrix. This ratio is constant for any particular conic section.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Deviation from a center; the state of a circle with reference to its center not coinciding with that of another circle.
- n. In geometry and astronomy, the distance between the foci of a conic divided by the transverse diameter. The eccentricity of the earth's orbit is .01677, or about .
- n. In ancient astronomy, the distance of the center of the equant from the earth.
- n. Departure or deviation from that which is stated, regular, or usual; oddity; whimsicalness: as, the eccentricity of a man's genius or conduct.
- n. An eccentric action or characteristic; a striking peculiarity of character or conduct.
- n. Also excentricity in the literal uses.
Wiktionary
- n. The quality of being eccentric; any eccentric behaviour.
- n. mathematics The ratio, constant for any particular conic section, of the distance of a point from the focus to its distance from the directrix
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The state of being eccentric; deviation from the customary line of conduct; oddity.
- n. (Math.) The ratio of the distance between the center and the focus of an ellipse or hyperbola to its semi-transverse axis.
- n. (Astron.) The ratio of the distance of the center of the orbit of a heavenly body from the center of the body round which it revolves to the semi-transverse axis of the orbit.
- n. (Mech.) The distance of the center of figure of a body, as of an eccentric, from an axis about which it turns; the throw.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (geometry) a ratio describing the shape of a conic section; the ratio of the distance between the foci to the length of the major axis
- n. a circularity that has a different center or deviates from a circular path
- n. strange and unconventional behavior
Etymologies
- eccentric + -ity (Wiktionary)
Examples
“In this case, their eccentricity is demonstrated by the fact that they genuinely could not care less about the reaction of the Chinese government.”
The Washington Post: Nobel Peace Prize reaction: China's angry, the U.S. is subdued
“His eccentricity is kind of admirable but I'd much rather listen to Daniel Johnston.”
“I suppose the band's English eccentricity is rather studied - the bass player is called The House of Lords "because he's big and all all important decisions have to go through him".”
“Hispanic eccentricity is peninsular and consists of the coexistence of different civilizations and different pasts: an inclusive eccentricity.”
“Hispanic eccentricity is reproduced and multiplied in America, especially in those countries such as Mexico and Peru, where ancient and splendid civilizations had existed.”
“The word eccentricity was not interpreted by the cadet, of course, as the Sep meant it should be, but in the sense we use it when we speak of the eccentricity of an orbit for instance.”
“They will allow for *one* "eccentricity" - queer, female, not white - but not more.”
“Americans have always had a tenuous relationship with the idea of eccentricity, unlike our forebears in England, where eccentrics occupy a hallowed part of the cultural fabric.”
Lesley M. M. Blume: Grey Gardens: What We Can Learn From The Edies
“As the French writer Germaine de Staël could observe in 1817: “There is no nation in which one finds as many examples as in England of what is termed eccentricity, that is to say a completely original way of being which takes no account of the opinion of others.””
The Wall Street Journal: When the Offbeat Unsettled Tout Paris
“The first cyclical variation, known as eccentricity, controls the shape of the Earth's orbit around the sun.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘eccentricity’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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MyWordList
for GRE Vocab Building
eccentricity, rife, epiphany, menial, assert, plod, scathing, petty, chum, dilatory, prolific, banal and 10 more...
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SCIE - graph theory
morphism, preorder, diagram, vector, quiver, functor, ancestor, successor, parent, simple, source, embedding and 423 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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five syllables
ontogenesis, phylogenesis, concatenation, androgenesis, extra textual, inexorably, spagyrically, apophenia, iatrochemist, monocotyloid, morphological, parthenogenic and 941 more...
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Words I Know
List of most of the words I've learned
garner, abase, abate, abdicate, abduct, aberration, abet, abhor, abide, abject, abjure, abnegation and 1046 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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My GRE
concomitant, mendacity, corollary, mandate, ascertain, exacerbate, substantiate, perennial, exemplify, hegemony, acrimonious, repertoire and 653 more...
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mandarine's Words
antepenultimate, metonymy, synecdoche, pop, kern, inherit, clique, scrumptious, macerate, murmur, kerning, veranda and 1068 more...
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SAT
abandon,extreme e..., abash,to humiliate, abate,to lessen, abbreviate,to sho..., abridge, abdicate,to forma..., aberration,depart..., abnormality, abet,to encourage, abhor,to hate, abide,to follow o..., abject,utterly ho... and 2228 more...
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ginnylev's Words
neuroplasticity, repudiate, scintilla, ruminate, tautology, ombudsman, exigent, filibuster, grace, ambidextrous, amends, disclosure and 623 more...
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MsHalston's Words
theoretically, insufferable, apolitico, milquetoast, egregious, aplomb, elan, fraught, flummox, befrocked, moll, molten and 605 more...
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The things they carried (List 2)
Listening to this as an audio book for the second time. Tim O'Brien uses simple words and phrases to great effect. Very few unfamilar and big words . The writing style reminds me of words from Joh...
The, Things, They, Carried, meant, fond, By necessity,, presented to him, far beyond, against the brick..., reaching, taut and 2940 more...
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Words That Populate My Mind
This is a collection of words I love, old ones that I love the sound of when I repeat them for years and new ones coined in news articles on up and coming trends and technologies - most of them I k...
aroma, mojo, blithely, fringe, fray, synchronicity, doublespeak, buzzword, thoughtcrime, portmanteau, newspeak, oldspeak and 963 more...
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ephemerides
being words related to astronomy, stellar cartography, and the music of the spheres, including names of planets, stars and constellations
ephemerides, ascension, declination, apogee, planet, star, constellation, galaxy, system, syzygy, ecliptic, sun and 202 more...
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Kaichi's Wordie Darlings, or I'm a Lo...
persnickety, discombobulated, braggadoccio, anthropomorphous, antelucan, confluxible, anomalous, poseur, gallivant, poppycock, falderal, gewgaw and 705 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for eccentricity.
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