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Tangential vs Transverse - What's the difference?

tangential | transverse |

As adjectives the difference between tangential and transverse

is that tangential is referring to a tangent, moving at a tangent to something while transverse is situated or lying across; side to side, relative to some defined "forward" direction.

As a noun transverse is

anything that is transverse or athwart.

As a verb transverse is

to overturn; to change.

tangential

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Referring to a tangent, moving at a tangent to something.
  • * 2002 , Edward Teller, Memoirs: A Twentieth Century Journey in Science and Politics , page 560
  • The meteor came in on a tangential orbit and exploded about 8 or 10 miles above the earth's surface, just south of the Arctic Circle.
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2012-03
  • , author=(Henry Petroski) , title=Opening Doors , volume=100, issue=2, page=112-3 , magazine= citation , passage=A doorknob of whatever roundish shape is effectively a continuum of levers, with the axis of the latching mechanism—known as the spindle—being the fulcrum about which the turning takes place. Applying a force tangential to the knob is essentially equivalent to applying one perpendicular to a radial line defining the lever.}}
  • Merely touching, positioned as a tangent.
  • * 1898 , Gary Nathan Calkins, Mitosis in ''Noctiluca miliaris'' and its bearing on the nuclear relations of the Protozoa and Metazoa , Ph.D. Thesis, page 3
  • The archoplasm divides and forms a very large spindle which first lies tangential to the surface of the nucleus.
  • Only indirectly related.
  • That subject is tangential to our discussion, and we cannot let it distract us.

    Derived terms

    * (l)

    transverse

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Situated or lying across; side to side, relative to some defined "forward" direction.
  • (geometry, of an intersection) Not tangent: so that a nondegenerate angle is formed between the two things intersecting.
  • Antonyms

    * (lying across) longitudinal

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Anything that is transverse or athwart.
  • (geometry) The longer, or transverse, axis of an ellipse.
  • Verb

    (transvers)
  • To overturn; to change.
  • * Rev. Charles Leslie
  • And so long shall her censures, when justly passed, have their effect: how then can they be altered or transversed , suspended or superseded, by a temporal government, that must vanish and come to nothing?
  • (obsolete) To change from prose into verse, or from verse into prose.
  • (Duke of Buckingham)
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