Definitions

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

  • transitive verb Mathematics To be opposite to and delimit.
  • transitive verb To underlie so as to enclose or surround.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To extend under or be opposite to: a geometrical terra: as, the side of a triangle which subtends the right angle.
  • In botany, to embrace in its axil, as a leaf, bract, etc.: as, in many Compositæ the florets are subtended by bracts called chaff.

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

  • transitive verb To extend under, or be opposed to.

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

  • verb transitive To extend or stretch underneath or opposite something
  • verb mathematics To enclose an arc on a circle with an angle

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

  • verb be opposite to; of angles and sides, in geometry

Etymologies

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

[Latin subtendere, to extend underneath : sub-, sub- + tendere, to extend; see ten- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin subtendere; sub under + tendere to stretch, extend. See tend.

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Examples

Comments

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  • It is the ability, first, to make a choice, to evaluate the consequences of that chosen course of action, and to prize the outcomes, and then it is the capacity to marshal one’s energy in effective pursuit of the consequences or goals subtended by that choice.

    December 31, 2010

  • "The mind's eye, scanning beneath the surface of the literal sense, soon sees that subtending Dante's journey is not only the conversion from sin to grace, but the progress too of the soul of Everyman" David H. Higgins University of Bristol in a foreword to C H Sisson's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy - Pan Books 1980.

    March 22, 2017