revolution

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Orbital motion about a point, especially as distinguished from axial rotation: the planetary revolution about the sun.
2. n. A turning or rotational motion about an axis.
3. n. A single complete cycle of such orbital or axial motion.
4. n. The overthrow of one government and its replacement with another.
5. n. A sudden or momentous change in a situation: the revolution in computer technology.
6. n. Geology A time of major crustal deformation, when folds and faults are formed.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of revolving or turning completely round, so as to bring every point of the turning body back to its first position; a complete rotation through 360°. Where the distinction is of importance, this is called a rotation.
2. n. The act of moving completely around a circular or oval course, independently of any rotation. In a revolution without rotation, every part of the body moves by an equal amount, while in rotation the motions of the different parts are proportional to their distances from the axis. But revolutions and rotations may be combined. Thus, the planets perform revolutions round the sun, and at the same time rotations about their own axes. The moon performs a rotation on its axis in precisely the same time in which it performs a revolution round the earth, to which it consequently always turns the same side.
3. n. A round of periodic or recurrent changes or events; a cycle, especially of time: as, the revolutions of the seasons, or of the hours of the day and night.
4. n. Hence A recurrent period or moment in time.
5. n. A total change of circumstances; a complete alteration in character, system, or conditions.
6. n. Specifically A radical change in social or governmental conditions; the overthrow of an established political system, generally accompanied by far-reaching social changes. The term Revolution, in English history, is applied distinctively to the convulsion by which James II. was driven from the throne in 1688. In American history it is applied to the war of independence. See below. [In this sense the word is sometimes used adjectively.]
7. n. The act of rolling or moving back; a return to a point previously occupied.
8. n. The act of revolving or turning to and fro in the mind; consideration; hence, open deliberation; discussion.
9. n. The winding or turning of a spiral about its axis, as a spiral of a shell about the columella; one of the coils or whorls thus produced; a volution; a turn.
10. n. Synonyms See insurrection.
11. n. In astrology, the annual return of the sun to the place he occupied at one's birth, from which, according as he may be aspected, an augury is derived regarding the complexion of the ensuing year of life.

Wiktionary

1. n. A political upheaval in a government or nation state characterized by great change.
2. n. The removal and replacement of a government.
3. n. Rotation: the turning of an object around an axis.
4. n. A rotation: one complete turn of an object during rotation.
5. n. In the case of celestial bodies - the traversal of one body through an orbit around another body.
6. n. A sudden, vast change in a situation, a discipline, or the way of thinking and behaving.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of revolving, or turning round on an axis or a center; the motion of a body round a fixed point or line; rotation.
2. n. Return to a point before occupied, or to a point relatively the same; a rolling back; return.
3. n. The space measured by the regular return of a revolving body; the period made by the regular recurrence of a measure of time, or by a succession of similar events.
4. n. (Astron.) The motion of any body, as a planet or satellite, in a curved line or orbit, until it returns to the same point again, or to a point relatively the same; -- designated as the annual, anomalistic, nodical, sidereal, or tropical revolution, according as the point of return or completion has a fixed relation to the year, the anomaly, the nodes, the stars, or the tropics
5. n. (Geom.) The motion of a point, line, or surface about a point or line as its center or axis, in such a manner that a moving point generates a curve, a moving line a surface (called a surface of revolution), and a moving surface a solid (called a solid of revolution)
6. n. A total or radical change.
7. n. (Politics) A fundamental change in political organization, or in a government or constitution; the overthrow or renunciation of one government, and the substitution of another, by the governed.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a single complete turn (axial or orbital)
2. n. a drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking and behaving
3. n. the overthrow of a government by those who are governed