Definitions

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

  • adjective Of, relating to, or having the shape of an ellipse.
  • adjective Containing or characterized by ellipsis.
  • adjective Of or relating to extreme economy of oral or written expression.
  • adjective Marked by deliberate obscurity of style or expression.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to an ellipse; having the form of an ellipse.
  • Pertaining to or marked by ellipsis; defective; having a part left out.
  • In entomology, elongate-ovate; more than twice as long as broad, parallel-sided in the middle, and rounded at both ends, but in general more broadly so at the base: applied especially to the abdomen, as in many Hymenoptera.
  • In mathematics, having a pair of characteristic elements imaginary: as, an elliptic involution.
  • See space.

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

  • adjective Of or pertaining to an ellipse; having the form of an ellipse; oblong, with rounded ends.
  • adjective Having a part omitted.
  • adjective leaving out information essential to comprehension; so concise as to be difficult to understand; obscure or ambiguous; -- of speech or writing.
  • adjective See under Chuck.
  • adjective an instrument arranged for drawing ellipses.
  • adjective (Math.) See Function.
  • adjective (Math.) See Integral.
  • adjective See under Polarization.

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

  • adjective geometry Related to an ellipse or its mathematical definition.

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

  • adjective rounded like an egg
  • adjective (of a leaf shape) in the form of an ellipse
  • adjective characterized by extreme economy of expression or omission of superfluous elements

Etymologies

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

[New Latin ellīpticus, from Greek elleiptikos, defective, from elleipsis, a falling short, ellipsis; see ellipsis.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek ἐλλειπτικός (elleiptikos), from ἐλλείπω (elleipō, "I leave out, omit").

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Examples

  • There is something in gauge theory called the elliptic sequence.

    Does Space Expand? Sean 2008

  • The resulting space is a closed manifold (without any boundary), and it is the carrier of the so-called elliptic non-Euclidean geometry of F. Klein (S.M. Coxeter, p. 13).

    INFINITY SALOMON BOCHNER 1968

  • Certicom specializes in what is called elliptic curve cryptography, which is used to encrypt electronic data.

    Top Stories - Google News 2009

  • They also can be grouped according to the central algorithm used, such as elliptic curve cryptography.

    Government Computer News Current Issue 2009

  • This elliptic galaxy (M84) is not only blue, but contains bubbles in bubbles like a Russian Doll.

    Archive 2009-01-01 Bente Lilja Bye 2009

  • Go back to elliptic curves or votign systems or whatever your thing is these days.

    Five times dumber « Motivated Grammar 2008

  • I am surprised... you make no mention of the person who, the moment you start using the treadmill or the elliptic trainer after patiently waiting for the person before you to be done, asks you how long more you'll be on, keeps asking you every five minutes for the entire duration of your allowed thirty-minute workout, all the while nervously pacing through the 2-sqm area right in front of you...

    Gym etiquette Professor in Training 2009

  • Hijacking astronomical argot from “white dwarves” to “red giants,” Big Bang explodes from this empty center with an elliptic circumscription of parodic pseudo-charts and de-functionalized cosmological notions.

    /ubu Editions, Third Series: 12 New Titles : Kenneth Goldsmith : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007

  • Certicom, of Mississauga, Ont., owns a large patent portfolio related to elliptic curve cryptography.

    Research In Motion Drops Certicom Bid 2009

  • Added mass for gravitation causes a positive curvature elliptic deformation of spacetime, allowing a black hole to possess unlimited volume inside an externally finite volume envelope - a Tardis.

    A TARDIS Of Your Very Own 2009

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