Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A rapid intermittent eye movement, as that which occurs when the eyes fix on one point after another in the visual field.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In the manège, a violent check of a horse by drawing or twitching the reins suddenly and with one pull.
- noun In violin-playing, a firm pressure of the bow on the strings, which crowds them down so that two or three can be sounded at once.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Man.) A sudden, violent check of a horse by drawing or twitching the reins on a sudden and with one pull.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun rare A sudden
jerking movement. - noun A rapid
jerky movement of theeye (voluntary or involuntary) from one focus to another. - noun The act of
checking ahorse quickly with a single strong pull of thereins . - noun music The
sounding of twoviolin strings together by using a sudden strong pressure of thebow .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a rapid, jerky movement of the eyes between positions of rest
- noun an abrupt spasmodic movement
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word saccade.
Examples
-
That can be attributed to something called a saccade—a fast movement of the eye that lasts between 20 and 200 milliseconds.
You Being Beautiful Michael F. Roizen 2008
-
The brain sends instructions to the eyes, the eyes respond with movement (called a saccade).
Archive 2006-11-01 2006
-
That can be attributed to something called a saccade—a fast movement of the eye that lasts between 20 and 200 milliseconds.
You Being Beautiful Michael F. Roizen 2008
-
The brain sends instructions to the eyes, the eyes respond with movement (called a saccade).
-
Nishigaki and Arai have turned to blind spot position and the so-called saccade response for their biometric.
-
In 'saccade' trials a 200 ms blank gap was introduced in order to speed up a saccade toward the first presented dot
PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Anna Oleksiak et al. 2010
-
The left panel represents a 'saccade' trial when an observer foveates the leftward dot and at the same time encodes the rightward dot by peripheral vision.
PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Anna Oleksiak et al. 2010
-
The lower panels characterize neuronal populations responses to the visual stimuli in the 'saccade' (left) and the 'fixate' (right) conditions.
PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Anna Oleksiak et al. 2010
-
In the 'saccade' condition while foveating one of the sample dots the horizontal separation between the dots corresponded directly with eccentricity.
PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Anna Oleksiak et al. 2010
-
For the 'saccade' (solid line with circles) condition, the eccentricity corresponded directly with the distance between the sample dots.
PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Anna Oleksiak et al. 2010
-
We also know that people don’t fixate on every word, but tend to skip words (their eyes take little leaps, called “saccades”) and fill in the rest.
Size Matters: Balancing Line Length And Font Size In Responsive Web Design – Smashing Magazine Laura Franz 2014
whichbe commented on the word saccade
Derived from a French word for twitch, saccade is a typical occurence in visual perception — the eyes fixing on one point after another in the visual field. Humans and other animals do not look at a scene in a steady way. Instead, the eyes move around, locating interesting parts of the scene and building up a mental 'map' corresponding to the scene. (From ArtLex)
June 4, 2008
aequoria commented on the word saccade
It is also used in music, to mean a rough and sudden movement of the violin bow that causes two or more strings to sound at once, while only bowing one I believe.
Its function is to give energy to a passage.
December 7, 2008
knitandpurl commented on the word saccade
"I gain the crest of the hill and there it is, falling away behind me, swags and ruches of greenery and brick, under the blue-painted ceiling of its recent conversion: New London, city of the toppermost property prices. I can see a golden drop of sunlight on the glans of the Swiss Re Tower (Lord Foster's phallus, commonly known as the Gherkin), and the inverted pool table of Battersea Power Station. I can see the Hampstead massif and the Telecom Tower. I can see my life, entire, in a single saccade."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 31
October 11, 2010
ruzuzu commented on the word saccade
"In the manège, a violent check of a horse by drawing or twitching the reins suddenly and with one pull."
--Cent. Dict.
August 14, 2012
michaelt42 commented on the word saccade
Wiktionary's definition (n. music - The sounding of two violin strings together by using a sudden strong pressure of the bow) is in a way misleading. A saccade is not necessary for double stopping - if it were several serene examples of violin writing would become unbearable. Triple stopping is another thing, as it it impossible to achieve without this technique. The Brahms violin concerto affords many examples.
June 12, 2013
michaelt42 commented on the word saccade
Interesting quote from Will Self, knitandpurl. I wonder where Will was when he saw this panorama of his life - or has he implicitly redefined saccade?
June 12, 2013