Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The continuous line or surface including all the particles in the same phase. It is a spherical surface for sound, and for light in an isotropic medium.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • "What would make a flat wave-front, sweeping across the entire universe, putting out the stars?"

    Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

  • They'd been hit by the expanding wave-front of the Lost Empire, and, being a martial people, had decided to make a fight of it.

    Asimov's Science Fiction 2003

  • Release it as the wave-front of the Storm passes, and use it to augment what the Storm does.

    Storm Breaking Lackey, Mercedes 1996

  • Release it as the wave-front of the Storm passes, and use it to augment what the Storm does.

    Storm Breaking Lackey, Mercedes 1996

  • The primary wave-front rushed on into the sunrise, losing height rapidly as it spread into the expanse of the Great Lagoon.

    The Golden Torc May, Julian, 1931- 1981

  • The only assumption made in determining the directions of the diffracted beams is that we have to deal with a train of wave of considerable depth and with a plane wave-front extending over a considerable number of atoms.

    G.P. Thomson - Nobel Lecture 1965

  • The ear trumpet collects the wave-front of a sound wave over a comparatively broad area and conducts it inward toward the sound-receptors, the sound wave intensifying as the passage narrows (much as the tide grows higher when it pours into a narrowing bay like the Bay of Fundy).

    The Human Brain Asimov, Isaac 1963

  • All stresses as a matter of fact occur in the ether; and they all have a material terminus at each end (or in exceptional cases a wave-front or some other recondite etherial equivalent), that is to say something possessing inertia; but the timed or _opportune_ existence of

    Life and Matter A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' Oliver Lodge 1895

  • You really don’t have any choice but to double, and quadruple, down on reality-denying flattery, in the hopes that you can get back ahead of the wave-front of real consequences generated by your policies.

    Matthew Yglesias » Economist of The People 2009

  • "higher" orderings (of consciousness or simply of life) which are approached by "surfing the wave-front of chaos," of complex dynamism.

    home 2009

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