Orthogonal

//ɔːˈθɒɡ.ə.nəl// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An orthogonal line.

    "All of the orthogonals in this painting display an understanding of linear perspective."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Of two objects, at right angles; perpendicular to each other. not-comparable

    "A chord and the radius that bisects it are orthogonal."

  2. 2
    Of a pair of vectors: having a zero inner product; perpendicular. not-comparable

    "The normal vector and tangent vector at a given point are orthogonal."

  3. 3
    Of a square matrix: such that its transpose is equal to its inverse. not-comparable
  4. 4
    Of a linear transformation: preserving its angles. not-comparable
  5. 5
    Of grid graphs, board games and polyominoes: vertical or horizontal but not diagonal. not-comparable
Show 4 more definitions
  1. 6
    Of a pair of elements in an ortholattice: each less than or equal to the orthocomplement of the other. not-comparable
  2. 7
    Statistically independent, with reference to variates. not-comparable
  3. 8
    Of two or more aspects of a problem, able to be treated separately; of a design, exhibiting consistency and composability. not-comparable

    "The content of the message should be orthogonal to the means of its delivery."

  4. 9
    Of two or more problems or subjects, independent of or irrelevant to each other. not-comparable

    "Even in a geostate, some people are willing to fight and die for their views, but the institutional change to a polystate seems somewhat orthogonal to such issues."

Adjective
  1. 1
    having a set of mutually perpendicular axes; meeting at right angles wordnet
  2. 2
    statistically unrelated wordnet
  3. 3
    not pertinent to the matter under consideration wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
rectangularcube-shapedcubedcubiccubicalcubiform

Antonyms

All antonyms
aslant

Example

More examples

"An orthogonal pair of polarized filters put together will block all light, but put a third one between them at a diagonal angle and some light will pass through."

Etymology

From Middle French orthogonal, in turn from Medieval Latin orthogōnālis and Latin orthogōnius (“right-angled”), ultimately from Ancient Greek ὀρθογώνιος (orthogṓnios, “rectangular”). By surface analysis, ortho- + -gon + -al.

Related phrases

orthogonal complementorthogonal functionorthogonal groupinner productright angle

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