Definitions

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

  • adjective Relating to or composed of right angles.
  • adjective Of or relating to a matrix whose transpose equals its inverse.
  • adjective Of or relating to a linear transformation that preserves the length of vectors.
  • adjective Very different or unrelated; sharply divergent.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to or depending upon the use of right angles.
  • Right-angled.

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

  • adjective Right-angled; rectangular.
  • adjective See under Orthographic.

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

  • adjective geometry Of two objects, at right angles; perpendicular to each other.
  • adjective statistics Statistically independent, with reference to variates.
  • adjective software engineering Of two or more aspects of a problem, able to be treated separately.
  • adjective Of two or more problems or subjects, independent of or irrelevant to each other.

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

  • adjective statistically unrelated
  • adjective having a set of mutually perpendicular axes; meeting at right angles
  • adjective not pertinent to the matter under consideration

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Greek orthogōnios : ortho-, ortho- + gōniā, angle; see genu- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Medieval Latin orthogonalis, from Latin orthogonius ("right-angled").

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