Curvature
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The shape of something curved. countable, uncountable
"Constructional costs are kept to a minimum by the admissibility of heavy grades and sharp curvature."
- 2 the property possessed by the curving of a line or surface wordnet
- 3 The extent to which a subspace is curved within a metric space. countable, uncountable
"A turtle drawing an ellipse would have to turn more per distance traveled to get around its “pointy” sides than to get around its flatter top and bottom. This notion of how “pointy something is,” expressed as the ratio of angle turned to distance traveled, is the intrinsic quantity that mathematicians call curvature."
- 4 the rate of change (at a point) of the angle between a curve and a tangent to the curve wordnet
- 5 The extent to which a Riemannian manifold is intrinsically curved. countable, uncountable
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- 6 (medicine) a curving or bending; often abnormal wordnet
Example
More examples"Seeing as the curvature is smaller than unity, once the curve leaves the unit circle it will not come back."
Etymology
From Latin curvare, from Latin curvatura. See also curve. Displaced native Old English ġebīeġednes.
Related phrases
More for "curvature"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.