Definitions

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

  • noun The act of accelerating.
  • noun The process of being accelerated.
  • noun Physics The rate of change of velocity with respect to time.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In biology, the supposed acquisition of new characters by adults, and their inheritance by descendants at earlier and earlier stages of their life; tachygenesis (which see).
  • noun The act of accelerating, or the state of being accelerated: as—
  • noun In mech., the rate of change of the velocity of a moving body; that is, the increment of velocity (in any direction) in the unit of time which would result were the rate of change to continue uniform for that length of time. The acceleration is said to be uniform if the body gains the same velocity in any constant direction in equal successive portions of time, no matter how small these portions may be taken. A constant force produces uniform acceleration in all cases; but it is sometimes convenient to substitute for some of the forces fictitious “constraints.” Thus, gravity (which near the earth's surface is sensibly a constant force) gives a falling body uniformly accelerated motion when the effect of the atmospheric resistance is eliminated; in this case the increment of velocity in each second, which is a little more than 32 feet, is called the acceleration of gravity, and in mechanical formulas is denoted by the letter g. When the velocity of a moving body continually diminishes, the acceleration is termed minus or negative, and the motion is said to be retarded; this is illustrated by the case of a ball thrown upward, the upward component of the velocity of which diminishes at the rate of 32 feet a second. Similarly, the force of friction which resists the motion of a sliding body is said to give it minus or negative acceleration.
  • noun The shortening of the time between the present and the happening of any future event; specifically, in law, the shortening of the time before the vesting of a person with the possession of an expected interest. In physiology and pathology, increased activity of the functions of the body, particularly of the circulation of the fluids.

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

  • noun The act of accelerating, or the state of being accelerated; increase of motion or action; ; -- opposed to retardation.
  • noun the increase of the moon's mean motion in its orbit, in consequence of which its period of revolution is now shorter than in ancient times.
  • noun See Priming of the tides, under Priming.
  • noun the amount by which their apparent diurnal motion exceeds that of the sun, in consequence of which they daily come to the meridian of any place about three minutes fifty-six seconds of solar time earlier than on the day preceding.
  • noun the increasing velocity of their motion, in proceeding from the apogee to the perigee of their orbits.

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

  • noun uncountable The act of accelerating, or the state of being accelerated; increase of motion or action; as opposed to retardation or deceleration.
  • noun countable The amount by which a speed or velocity increases (and so a scalar quantity or a vector quantity).
  • noun physics The change of velocity with respect to time (can include deceleration or changing direction).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the act of accelerating; increasing the speed
  • noun (physics) a rate of increase of velocity
  • noun an increase in rate of change

Etymologies

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Examples

  • So it's a scientific use of the term acceleration, as opposed to what we would think of.

    CNN Transcript Nov 15, 2001 2001

  • That is, the acceleration is a negative multiple of the position.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Pi Day 2010

  • That is, the acceleration is a negative multiple of the position.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Pi Day 2010

  • : Basically, this apps just attempts to give a value for the local gravitational field (which it calls the acceleration due to gravity).

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science Rhett Allain none@example.com 2010

  • "The solar probe will let us really dip right down in there and see what we call the acceleration region, which is where the coronal heating happens," Goetz said.

    News & Features from Minnesota Public Radio 2010

  • She's not the only driver complaining; Other Prius drivers have filed reports with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concerning what they describe as acceleration problems.

    KPIX: Top Stories Videos 2010

  • When it comes to efficient video playback, the ability to access hardware acceleration is the single most important factor in the overall CPU load.

    HTML5 Vs. Flash: HTML5 Isn’t Always Better | Lifehacker Australia 2010

  • We already knew that one of the causes of acceleration is the release of sequestered methane into the atmosphere as the temperature rises.

    Large Reserves of Combustible Ice Discovered in China | Inhabitat 2010

  • The acceleration is dire, with the 1.0l engine barely pulling, and on the open road it takes work to get it to 60, much less past it.

    Archive 2009-07-01 Dungeekin 2009

  • The way it works behind the scenes is that when you are running the Bump app, whenever the phone's accelerometer detects a bump (a sudden change in acceleration) it timestamps the event and sends it to the Bump server.

    "Bump" iPhone app is cool brendacooper 2009

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