Noun

(trajectories)

(astronomy, space) The path of a body as it travels through space.

(cybernetics) The ordered set of intermediate states assumed by a dynamical system as a result of time evolution.

Metaphorically, a course of development, such as that of a war or career.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-03

, author= , title=The Smallest Cell , volume=101, issue=2, page=83 , magazine= citation , passage=It is likely that the long evolutionary trajectory' of ''Mycoplasma'' went from a reductive autotroph to oxidative heterotroph to a cell-wall–defective degenerate parasite. This evolutionary ' trajectory assumes the simplicity to complexity route of biogenesis, a point of view that is not universally accepted.}}

Noun

(geometry) The conic section formed by the intersection of a cone with a plane parallel to a tangent plane to the cone; the locus of points equidistant from a fixed point (the focus) and line (the directrix).

(rhetoric) The explicit drawing of a parallel between two essentially dissimilar things, especially with a moral or didactic purpose. A parable.