Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of or relating to an exponent.
- adj. Mathematics Containing, involving, or expressed as an exponent.
- adj. Mathematics Expressed in terms of a designated power of e, the base of natural logarithms.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Of or pertaining to an exponent or exponents; involving variable exponents.
- n. The function expressed by the infinite series 1 + x + ½x + ⅙x +, etc., or the Napierian base raised to the power indicated by the variable. Thus, ex = exp. x is the exponential of x.
Wiktionary
- adj. Relating to an exponent.
- adj. mathematics Expressed in terms of a power of e.
- adj. In modern English, used to describe a high or rapid rate of change.
- n. mathematics Any function that has an exponent as an independent variable.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Pertaining to exponents; involving variable exponents
- adj. changing over time in an exponential manner, i. e. increasing or decreasing by a fixed ratio for each unit of time.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of or involving exponents
- n. a function in which an independent variable appears as an exponent
Examples
“I use the term exponential to refer to compounding's effect to set it off from those who use linear or arithmetic models.”
Further Discussion of Compounding Suggestions . . .. . . behind the curtain . . .
“MCINTYRE (voice over): Citing what he calls the exponential rise in the number of deaths both U.S. and Iraqi, along with the failure of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to disarm the warring militias, Republican Senator John Warner is sounding a dire warning.”
“(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) (SOUNDS) MCINTYRE (voice-over): Citing what he calls the exponential rise in the number of deaths, both U.S. and Iraqi, along with the failure of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to disarm the warring militias, Republican Senator John Warner is sounding a dire warming while he still has hope, it's fading fast.”
“JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Citing what he calls the exponential rise in the number of deaths, both U.S. and Iraqi, along with the failure of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to disarm the warring militias, Republican Senator John Warner is sounding a dire warning: While he still has hope, it's fading fast.”
“PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Citing what he calls the exponential rise in the number of deaths, both U.S. and Iraqi, along with the failure of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to disarm the warring militias, Republican Senator John Warner is sounding a dire warning: while he still has hope, it's fading fast.”
“JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Citing what he calls the exponential rise in the name of deaths, both U.S. and Iraqi, along with the failure of the government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki to disarm the warring militias, Republican Senator John Warner is sending a dire warning.”
“PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Citing what he calls the exponential rise in the number of death, both U.S. and Iraqi, along with the failure of the government Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to disarm the warring militias.”
“MCINTYRE (voice-over): Citing what he calls the exponential rise in the number of deaths, both U.S. and Iraqi, along with the failure of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to disarm the warring militias, Republican Senator John Warner is sounding a dire warning.”
“The fingers of the explosions, shooting off in exponential pathways, are a sort of Manifest Destiny writ large across the sky.”
“Balancing that point where the linear crosses the exponential is what long-term thinking should be about.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘exponential’.
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EU Buzz - ALL words and expressions
A combined list of
1. EU Buzz - single words
2. EU Buzz - collocations
3. EU Buzz - the 100 most active
collocation constituentsabsorption capacity, absorption rate, acceding country, accession candidate, accession countries, accession country, accession criteria, accession cycle, accession negotia..., accession partner..., accession priorities, accession treaty and 2650 more...
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Bright Folk
Some words I come across in my legal studies, though not really legal jargon. And the usage doesn't shout, "hey, I think I'm smart", just simply, "this is what applies in this context."
verbose, inter alia, ostentatious, usurp, presumptuous, anachronistic, unfettered, sine qua non, amenable, subversive, irreducible, penumbra and 28 more...
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Mathematical words
quasigroup, latin square, balanced design, ring, field, module, vector, modulus, neutral element, identity, map, function and 54 more...
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Favorites
disparage, partisan, cupidity, hokum, tussle, odious, dastardly, overture, plane, chronic, peering, peer and 328 more...
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LWC's Words
spork, heteroskedasticity, kurtosis, eigenspace, smithian, skewness, montanan, whoremonger, mellifluous, fishwife, papist, romanist and 142 more...
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MiaLuthien's list ♥
gambit, prehensile, coquetry, impunity, genuflect, ensconce, clavicle, delude, beget, castigate, life caching, convoluted and 478 more...
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reginaterra's Words
purl, blow, squish, andean, generality, adaptation, lush, pack, filter, acquiesce, abstraction, sweet and 508 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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Wordplay
reticent, slammerkin, moonstruck, zephyr, gallivant, hullabaloo, pandemonium, equestrian, wallflower, martyr, threadbare, treacherous and 180 more...
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singularity
technological singularity in the Kurzweil meaning
evolution, exponential, artificial intell..., extropism, transhumanism, matrioshka brain, computronium, toposophy
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Faintheart's Words
onomatopoeia, no, terrafactive, word, faint, heart, joy, quixotic, karla, half, amp, tardis and 181 more...
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JJMARLETTE's Words
phantasmagorical, antidisestablishm..., gargantuan, apocryphal, maim, disembowel, viscous, apothecary, seminal, exponential, googol, googolplex and 90 more...
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Some new Wordie words this week
Don't tell them they are not real--they might cry.
glover, breakfront, submaximal, criticality, lanoline, mouthy, botheration, metaphorically, metaphase, disavowal, arum, ostentatiously and 162 more...
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vinyl's Words
deliverator, finna, metric fuckton, fag, hyphy, ginormous, sacrilicious, fantabulous, macaca, n-word, pterodactyl, genious and 560 more...
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Sunbeam
Zoom'om'om; inspiration, vitality, solemness, and sunrays...
inspiral, activation, envision, myselves, recognition, imagination, repattern, exponential, flashforward, syncronicity, swish, sensation and 177 more...
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conceptwriter's Words
sloth, jackass, dickhead, technostalgic, futuristic, enigma, impact, addict, nasty, premium, extraordinaire, yearning and 262 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for exponential.

reesetee Now *there's* a thought.... Jul 8, 2007
oroboros Just slip it a Mickey Finn and be a math genius! (hee hee) Jul 6, 2007
reesetee If that's the case, oroboros, my number governor is a damned tyrant. ;-) Jul 6, 2007
oroboros Gotta be designed for it or there wouldn't BE "exponential numbers". Maybe most brains have a "number governor" installed; the ones that don't are right at home with exponentials and equations like e^iπ = -1 and so on. Jul 6, 2007
seanahan There is a fundamental human difficultly in dealing with exponential numbers. The mind has evolved to understand small quantities, the integers. The rational numbers, or fractions, are probably a rather recent invention, other than perhaps, I'll take 1/4 of that Woolly Mammoth we just killed. The human brain is just not designed to deal with numbers on an exponential scale.
Take, for example, the problem of the grains of rice on the chess board. At first glance, 1, 2, 4, 8, doesn't seem like a big deal. Of course, if you do the math, 2^64 is more grains of rice than have ever existed, but intuitively, it doesn't seem to be. Jul 6, 2007
uselessness More like a curvy L... or a J, as long as it's not one of those Js that curves back up on the short side. ;-) Jul 5, 2007
seanahan I took an intro biology class where they referred to it as a "J-shaped curve", which seemed like a pointless simplification. Jul 5, 2007
whichbe what if exponentially more people understood this word? Jul 5, 2007
azzurre if more people understood this word.... Mar 2, 2007