Adjacent Words

tangential definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: of superficial relevance if any; "a digressive allusion to the day of the week"; "a tangential remark" [syn: digressive, tangential]
2: of or relating to or acting along or in the direction of a tangent; "tangential forces"

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: 1630 1. of, relating to, or of the nature of a tangent 2. acting along or lying in a tangent <tangential forces> 3. a. divergent, digressive b. touching lightly ; incidental, peripheral <tangential involvement>; also of little relevance <arguments tangential to the main point> • tangentially adverb

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 of or along a tangent. 2 divergent. 3 peripheral. Derivatives: tangentially adv.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Tangential Tan*gen"tial, a. (Geom.) Of or pertaining to a tangent; in the direction of a tangent. Tangential force (Mech.), a force which acts on a moving body in the direction of a tangent to the path of the body, its effect being to increase or diminish the velocity; -- distinguished from a normal force, which acts at right angles to the tangent and changes the direction of the motion without changing the velocity. Tangential stress. (Engin.) See Shear, n., 3.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. If you describe something as tangential, you mean that it has only a slight or indirect connection with the thing you are concerned with, and is therefore not worth considering seriously. (FORMAL) Too much time was spent discussing tangential issues... ADJ 2. If something is tangential to something else, it is at a tangent to it. ...point T, where the demand curve is tangential to the straight line L. ADJ: oft ADJ to n

Moby Thesaurus

approaching, asymptotic, brushing, centripetal, centrolineal, concurrent, confluent, confocal, connivent, contacting, contingent, converging, digressive, divergent, extraneous, focal, glancing, grazing, impingent, impinging, in contact, irrelevant, meeting, mutually approaching, nudging, osculatory, peripheral, radial, radiating, rubbing, tangent, touching, uniting, unrelated