Osculation
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The action of kissing. countable, uncountable
- 2 the act of caressing with the lips (or an instance thereof) wordnet
- 3 A kiss. countable, uncountable
"The Major she held to be a sort of Bayard among Majors: and as for her son Arthur she worshipped that youth with an ardour which the young scapegrace accepted almost as coolly as the statue of the Saint in Saint Peter’s receives the rapturous osculations which the faithful deliver on his toe."
- 4 (mathematics) a contact of two curves (or two surfaces) at which they have a common tangent wordnet
- 5 A close contact. countable, uncountable
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- 6 A contact between curves or surfaces, at which point they have a common tangent. countable, uncountable
- 7 The determination of whether a number is divisible by another by means of certain operations on its digits. Vedic, countable, uncountable
Example
More examples"The Major she held to be a sort of Bayard among Majors: and as for her son Arthur she worshipped that youth with an ardour which the young scapegrace accepted almost as coolly as the statue of the Saint in Saint Peter’s receives the rapturous osculations which the faithful deliver on his toe."
Etymology
From Latin ōsculātiō (“a kissing”), from ōsculor (“I kiss”). By surface analysis, osculate + -ion.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.