Definitions

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

  • adjective Having at least two equal sides.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having two legs or sides equal: as, an isosceles triangle.
  • noun A genus of cerambycid longicorn beetles.

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

  • adjective (Geom.) Having two legs or sides that are equal; -- said of a triangle.

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

  • adjective geometry Having two sides of equal length, used especially of an isosceles triangle or isosceles trapezoid.

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

  • adjective (of a triangle) having two sides of equal length

Etymologies

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

[Late Latin īsoscelēs, from Greek īsoskelēs : īso-, iso- + skelos, leg.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek ἰσοσκελής, from ἴσος (isos, "equal") + σκέλος (skelos, "leg"); another word of the same root is scalene.

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Examples

  • Two men compete for the favors of a bored girl who wishes the hell with both of them — a spare sexual isosceles which is nicely symbolized in clean, stripped images of sail, sky, and water which group and re-group in triangles and trapeziums of gray and white as the boatload of trouble skims trimly across the lake.

    3 1/2 Miller, Jonathan 1964

  • For example, if one knows that the angles of all triangles are equal to two right angles, one knows in a sense-potentially-that the isosceles’ angles also are equal to two right angles, even if one does not know that the isosceles is a triangle; but to grasp this posterior proposition is by no means to know the commensurate universal either potentially or actually.

    Posterior Analytics Aristotle 2002

  • Its head is an isosceles triangle, with the tip being the right angle.

    The Bug on the Glass « Unknowing 2010

  • The production is aided by Jon Gaw's unusually functional and evocative set that situates the characters in what amounts to the base of a isosceles triangle whose tip extends indefinitely into a far-off vanishing point, suggesting both a going-nowhere claustrophobia as well as the prospect of infinite hope.

    James Scarborough: Little Shop of Horrors, STAGEStheatre, Fullerton James Scarborough 2011

  • The production is aided by Jon Gaw's unusually functional and evocative set that situates the characters in what amounts to the base of a isosceles triangle whose tip extends indefinitely into a far-off vanishing point, suggesting both a going-nowhere claustrophobia as well as the prospect of infinite hope.

    James Scarborough: Little Shop of Horrors, STAGEStheatre, Fullerton James Scarborough 2011

  • Yet, in 5 minutes, it explained to me what an isosceles trapezoidal arrangement is.

    À la carte, à la, Al 2009

  • The production is aided by Jon Gaw's unusually functional and evocative set that situates the characters in what amounts to the base of a isosceles triangle whose tip extends indefinitely into a far-off vanishing point, suggesting both a going-nowhere claustrophobia as well as the prospect of infinite hope.

    James Scarborough: Little Shop of Horrors, STAGEStheatre, Fullerton James Scarborough 2011

  • The production is aided by Jon Gaw's unusually functional and evocative set that situates the characters in what amounts to the base of a isosceles triangle whose tip extends indefinitely into a far-off vanishing point, suggesting both a going-nowhere claustrophobia as well as the prospect of infinite hope.

    James Scarborough: Little Shop of Horrors, STAGEStheatre, Fullerton James Scarborough 2011

  • The production is aided by Jon Gaw's unusually functional and evocative set that situates the characters in what amounts to the base of a isosceles triangle whose tip extends indefinitely into a far-off vanishing point, suggesting both a going-nowhere claustrophobia as well as the prospect of infinite hope.

    James Scarborough: Little Shop of Horrors, STAGEStheatre, Fullerton James Scarborough 2011

  • Well, almost – we were taught trapezoids and isosceles triangles.

    À la carte, à la, Al 2009

Comments

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  • Isosceles, Isosceles,

    Two angles have equal degrees.

    Isosceles, Isosceles,

    You look just like a Christmas tree.

    November 7, 2020