plane

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Mathematics A surface containing all the straight lines that connect any two points on it.
2. n. A flat or level surface.
3. n. A level of development, existence, or achievement: scholarship on a high plane.
4. n. An airplane or hydroplane.
5. n. A supporting surface of an airplane; an airfoil or wing.
6. adj. Mathematics Of or being a figure lying in a plane: a plane curve.
7. adj. Flat; level. See Synonyms at level.
8. n. A carpenter's tool with an adjustable blade for smoothing and leveling wood.
9. n. A trowel-shaped tool for smoothing the surface of clay, sand, or plaster in a mold.
10. v. To smooth or finish with or as if with a plane.
11. v. To remove with a plane: plane off the rough edges on a board.
12. v. To work with a plane.
13. v. To act as a plane.
14. v. To rise partly out of the water, as a hydroplane does at high speeds.
15. v. To soar or glide.
16. v. To travel by airplane.
17. n. The plane tree.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Having the character of a plane; contained within a plane: as, a plane mirror; a plane curve. In n-dimensional geometry, sometimes applied to a linear manifold of any number of dimensions, for which fiat is generally used.
2. In botany, having a flat surface or surfaces.
3. In entomology, flat and not deflexed; flat at the margins: as, plane elytra.
4. n. A geometrical surface such that if any two points in it are joined by a straight line, the line will lie wholly on the surface; a surface such that two of them which have any three points in common must coincide over their whole extent; hence, a real surface having (approximately) this form. It is thus the simplest of all geometrical surfaces. A plane may also be defined as a surface of the form which is the ideal limit toward which the surfaces of three rigid solids, A, B, C, approximate, if these are ground together in successive pairs, AB, BC, CA, AB, and so on indefinitely. In higher geometry a plane is considered as unlimited; but in elementary geometry a part of such a surface is also called a plane.
5. n. Specifically In biology: An ideal surface of extension in any axis of an organism: as, the vertical longitudinal plane of the body.
6. n. A surface approximately flat or level; a “horizon” : as, the plane of the teeth or of the diaphragm.
7. n. In coal-mining, any slope or incline on which coal is raised or lowered, but usually applied to self-acting inclines, or those on which the coal is lowered by gravity. [Pennsylvania anthracite region.] In England any main road, whether level or inclined, may be called a plane
8. n. In crystallography, one of the natural faces of a crystal.
9. n. Figuratively, a grade of existence or a stage of development: as, to live on a higher plane.
10. To make plane or smooth; make clear.
11. To make smooth, especially by the use of a plane: as, to plane wood.
12. To rub out; erase.
13. n. A tool for paring, smoothing, truing, and finishing woodwork. The essential parts of a plane are a stock or frame of wood or metal bering a smooth, concave, or convex base or sole, and a throat in which is placed a steel cutter called the plane-iron or bit. Various devices are used to keep the bit in position in the stock, the most simple and common being a wedge of wood. Planes are made in a great variety of shapes and sizes, and range from 1 to 72 inches in length. Nearly all are distinguished by names having reference to the particular kind of work for which they are designed, as the edge-plane, molding-plane, and smoothing-plane. Planes are also used for truing soft metal surfaces. Plane-irons are inserted in their stocks at various pitches or angles, according to the duty they are to perform. Common pitch, or 45' from the horizontal line, is used in all bench-planes for soft woods. The pitch is increased with the hardness of the material to be worked. See pitch and plane-stock, and cut in next column.
14. n. A metallic gage or test for a true surface; a true plane or plane surface; a surface-plate.
15. n. An instrument, resembling a plasterers' trowel, used by brickmakers for striking off clay projecting above the top of the mold.
16. n. The plane-tree.
17. n. In geometry, a plane through the center of a sphere.
18. n. In linegeom., one of the planes of which two are determined by each straight of the congruence taken with each of the two straights consecutive to it by which it is intersected.
19. n. A wood-working plane having a stock resting on adjustable slides which take the place of the sole, and having adjustable fences on each side of the stock, so as to admit, by the use of various attachments, of the use of a great variety of bits. It can thus be used in molding, matching, beading, reeding, aud fiuting, as a hollow, chamfer-, fillister-, dado-, and slitting-plane, and as a plow. Also called universal plane.

Wiktionary

1. n. countable A tool for smoothing wood by removing thin layers from the surface.
2. v. transitive To smooth (wood) with a plane.
3. n. An airplane; an aeroplane.
4. v. nautical To move in a way that lifts the bow of a boat out of the water.
5. v. To glide or soar.
6. n. countable, botany A deciduous tree of the genus Platanus.
7. n. Northern UK A sycamore.
8. adj. Of a surface: flat or level.
9. n. A level or flat surface.
10. n. geometry A flat surface extending infinitely in all directions (e.g. horizontal or vertical plane).
11. n. A level of existence or development. (eg, astral plane)
12. n. A roughly flat, thin, often moveable structure used to create lateral force by the flow of air or water over its surface, found on aircraft, submarines, etc.
13. n. computing Any of a number of designated ranges of sequential code points.
14. n. anatomy An imaginary plane which divides the body into two portions.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Bot.) Any tree of the genus Platanus.
2. adj. Without elevations or depressions; even; level; flat; lying in, or constituting, a plane.
3. n. (Geom.) A surface, real or imaginary, in which, if any two points are taken, the straight line which joins them lies wholly in that surface; or a surface, any section of which by a like surface is a straight line; a surface without curvature.
4. n. (Astron.) An ideal surface, conceived as coinciding with, or containing, some designated astronomical line, circle, or other curve
5. n. (Mech.) A block or plate having a perfectly flat surface, used as a standard of flatness; a surface plate.
6. n. (Joinery) A tool for smoothing boards or other surfaces of wood, for forming moldings, etc. It consists of a smooth-soled stock, usually of wood, from the under side or face of which projects slightly the steel cutting edge of a chisel, called the iron, which inclines backward, with an apperture in front for the escape of shavings
7. v. To make smooth; to level; to pare off the inequalities of the surface of, as of a board or other piece of wood, by the use of a plane.
8. v. To efface or remove.
9. v. rare Figuratively, to make plain or smooth.
10. v. Of a boat, to lift more or less out of the water while in motion, after the manner of a hydroplane; to hydroplane.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. travel on the surface of water
2. n. a carpenter's hand tool with an adjustable blade for smoothing or shaping wood
3. v. make even or smooth, with or as with a carpenter's plane
4. n. (mathematics) an unbounded two-dimensional shape
5. adj. having a surface without slope, tilt in which no part is higher or lower than another
6. v. cut or remove with or as if with a plane
7. n. a level of existence or development
8. n. a power tool for smoothing or shaping wood
9. n. an aircraft that has a fixed wing and is powered by propellers or jets