Orbital
adj, noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A specification of the energy and probability density of one or more electrons at any point in an atom or molecule, representable as a wave function.
- 2 Ellipsis of orbital motorway. UK, abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis
- 3 Ellipsis of orbital sander. abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis
"As with most power tools, orbitals can be divided into light and heavy-duty categories."
- 1 Of or relating to, or forming an orbit (such as the orbit of a moon, planet, or spacecraft). not-comparable
"The 1.2-meter-diameter (4-foot-diameter) telescope has set off on a monthlong journey to its orbital destination of the sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, which is nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away from Earth and also home to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Euclid will keep pace with Earth as our planet orbits the sun."
- 2 Of or relating to the eye socket (eyehole). not-comparable
- 3 (of roads, railways) Passing around the outside of an urban area. UK, not-comparable
"The M25 is an orbital motorway around London."
- 1 describing a circle; moving in a circle wordnet
- 2 of or relating to the eye socket wordnet
- 3 of or relating to an orbit wordnet
Example
More examples"After much debate, it was decided that to be a planet in our solar system, an object must be in orbit around the Sun, have enough mass so that it has become round in shape due to its own gravity, and have cleared out its orbital path around the Sun."
Etymology
Borrowed from Medieval Latin orbitālis, from orbita (“a track or rut; a circuit, orbit”) + -ālis (“-al”, adjectival suffix), equivalent to orbit + -al. Doublet of orbitalis.
Related phrases
More for "orbital"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.