spirals

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The breastplate over his long red riding robe was of polished steel, inlaid with gold in Arabic spirals.

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Definitions (76)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (13)

  1. noun A curve on a plane that winds around a fixed center point at a continuously increasing or decreasing distance from the point.
  2. noun A three-dimensional curve that turns around an axis at a constant or continuously varying distance while moving parallel to the axis; a helix.
  3. noun Something having the form of such a curve: a spiral of black smoke.

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Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

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Examples (50)

  • Anxiously she sniffed in widening half-spirals, since the Chasm was too deep at this point to show any sign of the victim within it, assuming the Gap Dragon had not already cleaned up the mess. —  Night Mare
  • The spirals are then subdivided once more into "normal spirals" and "barred spirals" and in each of the two spiral types, astronomers distinguish "early," "intermediate" and "late" forms. —  GALAXY
  • Since the elliptical extragalactics as well as the spirals are galaxies like our own, generally speaking, their light is due to the stars which compose them. —  GALAXY
  • There was an odd collection of geometric symbols- curves, spirals, and sharp angles that crossed and recrossed the gathered figures, bisecting some, leaving others untouched Doodles, thought Tocasia, created by a race of desert titans The drawings were of Thran origins, of course, as Mishra had guessed. —  JEFF GRUBB
  • The reason was that the sidereals were supposed to have penetrated to the core along spirals, the cislunar missiles pushing the crumbling globe toward the Sun and the translunar toward the planet. —  FIASCO - Stanislaw Lem
 

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