Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or relating to a tetrahedron.
  • adjective Having four faces.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to a tetrahedron.
  • In crystallography: Having the form of the regular tetrahedron.
  • Pertaining or relating to a tetrahedron, or to the system of forms to which the tetrahedron belongs: as, tetrahedral hemihedrism (see hemihedrism).

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Having, or composed of, four sides.
  • adjective Having the form of the regular tetrahedron.
  • adjective Pertaining or related to a tetrahedron, or to the system of hemihedral forms to which the tetrahedron belongs.
  • adjective (Geom.) a solid angle bounded or inclosed by four plane angles.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective in the shape of a tetrahedron
  • adjective having four faces, four apices and six edges

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

tetra- + -hedral

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word tetrahedral.

Examples

  • The lugsails are arranged in a tetrahedral, that is, each of the four lugsails is oriented exactly 109.47 degrees from the other three.

    365 tomorrows » 2008 » November : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2008

  • "That's a different kind," the Forecaster answered, "it's called a tetrahedral kite, and was invented by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell.

    The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men Francis Rolt-Wheeler 1918

  • Like a routine play nine hundred and ninety eight spindly human figures stepped forth onto the walls and filed towards the black emptiness arranged around the Core in what a chemist or mathematician might call tetrahedral bipyramidal form.

    365 tomorrows » 2009 » July : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2009

  • This stereochemical concept rests on the original suggestion by van't Hoff of the tetrahedral arrangement of the four valences of the carbon atom (see Section 2), and most organic molecules exist in two or more stable conformations.

    The Nobel Prize in Chemistry: The Development of Modern Chemistry 2010

  • The tetrahedral vessel would bounce and land on one of its faces, and one or the other of them would be right-side up and in a position to help the others.

    Archive 2010-02-01 Blue Tyson 2010

  • In addition to using these skeletal tetrahedral frames as geological armatures, to hold back the earth and facilitate access, they will also bore through the bedrock, drilling new passages and eroding caverns to dwarf the nave of St. Peter's, wherein they will lock into place as columns, arches and internal buttresses.

    Accessing the Wilderness, or: A Proposal for a National Park of Abandoned Gold Mines 2008

  • He went to the tetrahedral capsule's backside, and twisted the knob that should have immediately opened the cover plate of the Mars Shelter Unit stowage compartment.

    Who Do You Say I Am 2010

  • German physicist Willhelm Conrad Röntgen, who discovered X-rays in the late 19th century, published a paper proposing that liquid water comprised two different structures — one tetrahedral “ice-like” structure, and another more loosely arranged structure, which helped explain why water behaves in such unusual ways.

    More Evidence for a Revolutionary Theory of Water « Isegoria 2008

  • Lowell Gilbert @ 13, kid bitzer @ 15 -- Remember that the tetrahedral shape is that of the four bonds of the carbon atom; the implied tetrahedra are connected tip-to-tip, not solidly packed.

    Making Light: The tastemakers of tomorrow 2010

  • “Clay” as a mineral refers to a “cousin” of micas; that is, a silicate mineral containing structural sheets of silica tetrahedra tetrahedral arrangements of one Si and 4 Oxygen atoms, with the Oxygen atoms at the 4 corners.

    Open thread: questions and explanations - The Panda's Thumb 2009

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • You can call me two-faced, but I'm tetrahedral.

    October 8, 2007

  • Heehee.

    October 8, 2007