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Definition of Epicycle
1. Noun. A circle that rolls around (inside or outside) another circle; generates an epicycloid or hypocycloid.
Definition of Epicycle
1. n. A circle, whose center moves round in the circumference of a greater circle; or a small circle, whose center, being fixed in the deferent of a planet, is carried along with the deferent, and yet, by its own peculiar motion, carries the body of the planet fastened to it round its proper center.
Definition of Epicycle
1. Noun. (astronomy) A small circle whose centre is on the circumference of a larger circle; in Ptolemaic astronomy it was seen as the basis of revolution of the "seven planets", given a fixed central Earth. ¹
2. Noun. (mathematics) Any circle whose circumference rolls around that of another circle, thus creating a hypocycloid or epicycloid. ¹
¹ Source: wiktionary.com
Definition of Epicycle
1. a circle that rolls on the circumference of another circle [n -S]
Medical Definition of Epicycle
1.
1. A circle, whose center moves round in the circumference of a greater circle; or a small circle, whose center, being fixed in the deferent of a planet, is carried along with the deferent, and yet, by its own peculiar motion, carries the body of the planet fastened to it round its proper center. "The schoolmen were like astronomers which did feign eccentries, and epicycles, and such engines of orbs." (Bacon)
2.
Lexicographical Neighbors of Epicycle
Literary usage of Epicycle
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. A Dictionary of Science, Literature, & Art: Comprising the Definitions and by William Thomas Brande, George William Cox (1867)
"By means of these suppositions, and by assigning proper ratios (determined by
observation) between the radius of the défèrent and the radius of the epicycle ..."
2. Library of Useful Knowledge (1834)
"There is another way, however, of explaining this irregularity, by the hypothesis
of an epicycle. In this case the planet was supposed to move in a small ..."
3. Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europe, CA. 800-1500 by Bruce Eastwood, Gerd Grasshoff (2004)
"And in the same way by the epicyclic motion on the path NE the Sun finally reaches
from H to Z just as the motion of its epicycle is seen to hasten through ..."
4. The Planetary System: A Study of Its Structure and Growth by Frank Bursley Taylor (1903)
"The forces of the epicycle and their relation to geocentric stability. It was
pointed out above that the epicycle- corresponding theoretically to any given ..."
5. The Wittich Connection: Conflict and Priority in Late Sixteenth-century by Owen Gingerich, Robert S. Westman (1988)
"The SECOND MODE has a homocentric equal in size and speed to the eccentric, which
carries a double epicycle in which the radius of the first is equal to the ..."
6. The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge by Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Great Britain), George Long (1843)
"The epicycle is, at any given instant, moving forward perpendicularly to the
radius of the deferent with the velocity a, while the planet is moving ..."
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