osculation - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Latin ōsculātiō (“a kissing”), from ōsculor (“to kiss”).[1] By surface analysis, osculate +‎ -ion.

osculation of a circle and a curve C

osculation (countable and uncountable, plural osculations)

  1. The action of kissing.
  2. A kiss.
    • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, “A Pedigree and Other Family Matters”, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume I, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849, →OCLC, page 15:
      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.
  3. A close contact.
  4. (mathematics) A contact between curves or surfaces, at which point they have a common tangent.
  5. (Vedic arithmetic) The determination of whether a number is divisible by another by means of certain operations on its digits.
  1. ^ “osculation, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

osculation f (plural osculations)

  1. osculation

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