Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The geologic science of the size and shape of the earth.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Formerly, the art of land-surveying in general, but now restricted to that branch of applied mathematics, distinctively called
higher geodesy , which investigates the figures and areas of large portions of the earth's surface, the exact determinations of geographical positions and the azimuths of directions, the general figure of the earth, and the variations of the intensity of gravity in different regions, by means of direct observation and measurement.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Math.) That branch of applied mathematics which determines, by means of observations and measurements, the figures and areas of large portions of the earth's surface, or the general figure and dimenshions of the earth; or that branch of surveying in which the curvature of the earth is taken into account, as in the surveys of States, or of long lines of coast.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Scientific discipline that deals with the measurement and representation ofearth , itsgravitational field andgeodynamic phenomena (polar motion, earth tides, and crustal motion) in three‐dimensional, time‐varying space.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the branch of geology that studies the shape of the earth and the determination of the exact position of geographical points
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Just curious, is there a particular subset of quasars that are typically used in geodesy?
URSI Update #2 Nicole 2009
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Time is important in geodesy and we use all kinds of clocks.
Archive 2009-01-01 Bente Lilja Bye 2009
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I suppose few of you know what geodesy is let alone understand how Vanguard 1 or any other space technology improved this particular branch of geoscience.
Vanguard 1 Bente Lilja Bye 2008
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The technology has transformed geodesy, but for it to work, a GPS-enabled device must be present at the site of whatever is being measured—on the bank of a river, say, or at the top of Everest.
Why Measure a Mountain? Because It's There Carl Bialik 2011
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Datum remains standard and retains the general meaning of “a unit of information”, though it tends to appear mostly in academic and specialist disciplines such as philosophy, surveying, geodesy, topography, technical drawing, and cartography:
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Naming it after the Persian polymath who is considered by some the father of geodesy and geology and who calculated the radius of Earth to about 17 km of its actual value 500 years before anyone in Europe figured it out would go a long way to acknowledge that people in the Middle East also have made great contributions to the knowledge of mankind just as Galileo and Cassini have. former CA resident
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One approach, which is expensive and not yet widely applied, is called seafloor geodesy.
Scientists Misjudged Quake Potential Gautam Naik 2011
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As much as climbing the Himalayan peak is a signature accomplishment for mountaineers, so measuring it accurately is a signature goal for scientists in the field of geodesy, or the measurement of Earth.
Why Measure a Mountain? Because It's There Carl Bialik 2011
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It also emphasizes the need to do seafloor geodesy.
Scientists Misjudged Quake Potential Gautam Naik 2011
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We could produce weather visualizations for any country or the whole world, taking advantage of the new integrated geodesy system to visualize in Mercator or any other cartographic projection.
Wolfram Blog : Visualizing Weather Patterns in Mathematica 7 2009
seanahan commented on the word geodesy
The science and math dealing with the size and shape of the earth.
October 23, 2007
seanahan commented on the word geodesy
I've always thought that the person who studies this should be a geodeist.
October 23, 2007
seanahan commented on the word geodesy
I would say it (geo-DESsy) or (gee-AH-duh-see), but it looks like the Odyssey pronunciation is deemed "correct".
December 31, 2009
ruzuzu commented on the word geodesy
"en discipline that deals with the measurement and representation of en, its en field and en phenomena (polar motion, earth tides, and crustal motion) in three‐dimensional, time‐varying space."
--Wiktionary
November 7, 2012
chained_bear commented on the word geodesy
"A great many mysteries about natural phenomena remained to be solved in the eighteenth century, and confusion still reigned over the precise shape of the globe. It was so important that studying it had a word all its own--geodesy. Creating uncertainty about something as basic as the shape of the earth made the ground upon which Europeans stood no longer seem quite as solid as it had before the shape became a contested issue."
--Joyce Appleby, Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013), p. 160
December 28, 2016