Deceleration

//dɪˌsɛləˈɹeɪʃən// noun

noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act or process of decelerating. uncountable

    "The rocket is now in deceleration."

  2. 2
    the act of decelerating; decreasing the speed wordnet
  3. 3
    The amount by which a speed or velocity decreases (and so a scalar quantity or a vector quantity), an acceleration having a negative numerical value. countable

    "The brakes produce a deceleration of 10 metres per second."

  4. 4
    a decrease in rate of change wordnet
  5. 5
    (physics) a rate of decrease in velocity wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
arrestarrestationcatabasischeckcollapseconstraint

Example

More examples

"When the moon approached the Earth, it experienced very strong deceleration. This slowdown ultimately led to our having a pleasant day and pleasant weather."

Etymology

From de- + (ac)celeration.

Related phrases

scalar quantityvector quantity

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.