Definitions

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

  • noun The act or process of turning around a center or an axis.
  • noun A single complete cycle of such motion.
  • noun Mathematics A transformation of a coordinate system in which the new axes have a specified angular displacement from their original position while the origin remains fixed.
  • noun Regular and uniform variation in a sequence or series.
  • noun The sequence in which the starting pitchers on a team pitch in games.
  • noun The pitchers used in such a sequence.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In forestry, the period represented by the age of a forest, or a part of a forest, at the time when it is cut, or intended to be cut.
  • noun The act of rotating or turning, or the state of being whirled round; the continuous motion of a solid body, as a wheel or sphere, about an axis, its opposite sides moving relatively to one another, as distinguished from the forward motion of the whole body in a circle or an ellipse independent of any relative motion of its parts, as that of the planets.
  • noun A peculiar spiral movement of fluids observed within the cavity of certain vegetable cells, as in Chara and Vallisneria. See below.
  • noun Serial or recurrent order; a round or sequence of one after another; a fixed or definite routine of succession; regularly recurring change.

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

  • adjective Pertaining to, or resulting from, rotation; of the nature of, or characterized by, rotation.
  • noun The act of turning, as a wheel or a solid body on its axis, as distinguished from the progressive motion of a revolving round another body or a distant point; thus, the daily turning of the earth on its axis is a rotation; its annual motion round the sun is a revolution.
  • noun Any return or succesion in a series.
  • noun See Moment of inertia, under Moment.
  • noun the practice of changing public officers at frequent intervals by discharges and substitutions.
  • noun the practices of cultivating an orderly succession of different crops on the same land.

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

  • noun The act of turning around a centre or an axis.
  • noun A single complete cycle around a centre or an axis.
  • noun A regular variation in a sequence.
  • noun mathematics An isometry that fixes precisely one point.
  • noun baseball The set of starting pitchers of a team.
  • noun aviation The step during takeoff when the pilot commands the vehicle to lift the nose wheel off the ground during the takeoff roll.

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

  • noun a planned recurrent sequence (of crops or personnel etc.)
  • noun a single complete turn (axial or orbital)
  • noun (mathematics) a transformation in which the coordinate axes are rotated by a fixed angle about the origin
  • noun the act of rotating as if on an axis

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin rotationem, accusative of rotatio.

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