| 释义 |
▪ I. vector, n.|ˈvɛktə(r)|
[a. L. vector, agent-noun f. vehĕre to carry. So (in sense 1) Sp. and Pg. vector, F. vecteur.]
†1. Astr. (See quot. 1704.) Also vector radius, = radius vector, radius n. 3 e. Obs.
1704J. Harris Lex. Techn. I. s.v., A Line supposed to be drawn from any Planet moving round a Center, or the Focus of an Ellipsis, to that Center or Focus, is by some Writers of the New Astronomy, called the Vector; because 'tis that Line by which the Planet seems to be carried round its Center. 1796Morse Amer. Geog. I. 28 If a right line, called by some the vector radius, be drawn from the sun through any planet, and supposed to revolve round the sun with the planet [etc.].
2. a. Math. A quantity having direction as well as magnitude, denoted by a line drawn from its original to its final position. axial vector = pseudovector n.; polar vector, a vector which changes sign when the signs of all its components are changed.
1846W. R. Hamilton in Phil. Mag. XXIX. 27 The algebraically imaginary part, being geometrically constructed by a straight line, or radius vector, which has, in general, for each determined quaternion, a determined length and determined direction in space, may be called the vector part, or simply the vector of the quaternion. a1865W. R. Hamilton Elem. Quaternions i. i. 1 A right line AB, considered as having not only length, but also direction, is said to be a Vector. 1873J. C. Maxwell Treat. Electr. & Magn. I. 9 A Vector, or Directed Quantity, requires for its definition three numerical specifications, and these may most simply be understood as having reference to the directions of the coordinate axes. 1882Minchin Unipl. Kinemat. 109 The resultant of a system of vectors whose type is ω . IP dm, if each were directed from I to P, would be a vector ω M . IG directed from I to G. 1903Nature 22 Oct. 610/1 This algebra..does not discriminate between ‘polar’ vectors, e.g. forces and ‘axial’ vectors, e.g. couples. 1968M. S. Livingston Particle Physics v. 101 Angular momentum is an axial vector quantity, unlike linear momentum which is a polar vector.
b. Math. An ordered set of two or more numbers (interpretable as the co-ordinates of a point); a matrix with one row or one column; also, any element of a vector space.
[1873: see prec. sense. 1881J. W. Gibbs Sci. Papers (1906) II. 17 The numerical description of a vector requires three numbers.] 1922J. B. Shaw Vector Calculus i. 6 A vector is usually designated by a triple as (x, y, z), and usually such triple is called a vector. 1938R. A. Frazer et al. Elem. Matrices i. 2 A row matrix is often called..a vector of the first kind..; while a column matrix is referred to as a vector of the second kind. 1940D. E. Littlewood Theory Group Characters i. 5 A square matrix..of order n2 may be regarded as composed of n column vectors. 1961Communications Assoc. Computing Machinery IV. 424/2 The analysis of a program into phases and sequences is accomplished by associating with each sequence a vector of ones and zeros. 1965Patterson & Rutherford Elem. Abstr. Algebra v. 155 The polynomial ring P(F) is a vector space over the same field F... The polynomials are in this case the vectors of this vector space. 1976Biometrika LXIII. 438 Given N0, the vector (n1, {ddd}, nx0) will have a multinomial distribution with N0 trials. 1981N. Rau Matrices & Math. Programming i. 16 Up to this point, vectors have been considered simply as a special case of matrices... For the rest of this book..‘vector’ will always be used to mean column vector.
c. Aeronaut. A course to be taken by an aircraft, or steered by a pilot.
1941D. Masters So Few xxx. 333 ‘I've got to get a Hun tonight. I'll give you a bottle of champagne if you put me on to one.’.. ‘All right,..I'll give you a vector.’ 1951O. Berthoud tr. Clostermann's Big Show 102, I am climbing flat out on vector 095. 1978R. V. Jones Most Secret War xxi. 177 The ground station ordered an aircraft to steer a course of 270° (i.e. due west) presumably because it was east of the beam, and this was the vector required to bring it to the right point to start its bombing run.
d. Computing. A sequence of consecutive locations in memory; a series of items occupying such a sequence and identified within it by means of one subscript; spec. one serving as the address to which a program must jump when interrupted, and supplied by the source of the interruption.
1961Communications Assoc. Computing Machinery IV. 61/1 Since it is often necessary to refer to memory addresses and the contents of memory cells in this discussion, the almost-legitimate device of the ‘Memory vector’ will be used. This is done by assuming the entire memory of the machine in question to constitute a single one-dimensional vector, named ‘Memory’. 1962E. W. Dijkstra Primer of ALGOL 60 Programming 37 The simplest example of such an array is a vector, i.e. a sequence of subscripted variables. 1967D. G. Hays Introd. Computational Linguistics ii. 26 When the program stops, the J-th column of the matrix F has been copied into the vector G. 1967P. A. Stark Digital Computer Programming xiv. 255 After checking the transfer vector to see that the subroutine name is there, the loader goes back into the mainline program and fixes the linkage so that the mainline program jumps into the transfer vector. 1975R. H. Eckhouse Minicomputer Systems vi. 186 The new contents of the PC [sc. program counter] and the PS [sc. processor status] are loaded from two preassigned consecutive memory locations called an interrupt vector... The contents of these vectors are determined by the programmer. 1982Economist 3 Apr. 128/3 Individual units of data (ie, binary numbers) are stored in the computer's memory in long lists called vectors. 1982R. A. Sparkes Microcomputers in Sci. Teaching v. 199 A test must be included into the routine to ascertain if the user wants to return to normal working. If so, the ISR [sc. interrupt service routine] vector is changed back to 58926 and the extra routine is by-passed. 1984Personal Software Winter 89/3 During loading, a message is displayed on the screen and the keyboard and screen vectors are changed to effect automatic program execution.
3. a. Med. and Biol. A person, animal, or plant which carries a pathogenic agent and acts as a potential source of infection for members of another species. Also transf. Cf. carrier 1 l (i).
1922[see Arthropoda, arthropod]. 1944Nature 5 Aug. 167/2 Regular transmission of viruses by the egg of the host plant (the insect vector does not concern us unless it suffers) probably does not occur. 1963R. Carson Silent Spring xvi. 220 An even more serious problem concerns the vector of yellow fever. 1972Lancet 17 June 1338/2 The stethoscope is yet another vector of pathogenic organisms. 1974Passmore & Robson Compan. Med. Stud. III. xii. 64/2 The spread of each of the insect-borne diseases depends on a complicated chain of events involving..a reservoir of infection which may be either in man or in other animals,..the insect vector and..a susceptible human population. 1976Dumfries & Galloway Standard 25 Dec. 8/6 A small boy recovered after being bitten by a rabid bat, it being thought that the disease had been modified by passage through this unusual vector.
b. Genetics. A bacteriophage which transfers genetic material from one bacterium to another; also, a phage or plasmid used to transfer extraneous DNA into a cell.
1958Abstr. 7th Internat. Congr. Microbiol. 53 The modified phage particle so produced has been identified as the transducing vector. 1968W. Hayes Genetics of Bacteria & their Viruses (ed. 2) xvii. 478 Some other temperate phages..can act as vectors for the transfer, to recipient bacteria, of virtually any region of the host chromosome. 1976Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. LXXIII. 2838/1 Gene transfer between two closely related mouse cell lines has been carried out, using as the vector a cell⁓free preparation of metaphase chromosomes and nuclei. 1982T. M. Devlin Textbk. Biochem. xx. 986/2 The methodology involves obtaining the DNA of the desired gene; placing the DNA into a vector or vehicle capable of transporting the gene and maintaining it inside an E. coli cell;..and determining whether the gene is functional in E. coli. 1983Sci. Amer. Jan. 58/2 Plasmids are routinely used as vectors for introducing foreign DNA into bacteria. 1985Old & Primrose Princ. Gene Recombination (ed. 3) 222 This may have the additional property of being a shuttle vector, capable of stable replication in E. coli and A. tumefaciens.
4. transf. and fig.
1926Spectator 30 Oct. 735/1 Even if there was a listener⁓in within the narrow vector of the vibrations, he could not hope to receive the messages at the rate at which they will be sent. 1954W. Faulkner Fable 82 He identified himself, naming his battalion and its vector. 1957L. Durrell Bitter Lemons 37 But I was on a different vector, hunting for other qualities which might make residence tolerable, or might isolate me from my fellows. 1976Listener 15 Apr. 466/1 Once, a long vector of geese flew over. 1977A. Hecht in Oxf. Bk. Contemp. Verse (1980) 173 The athlete's dancing vector, the spirit's need, And muscle's cleanly diction. 1979UCT Studies in English (Univ. Cape Town) Sept. 39 Antithesis is, of course, the chief trope of the rape genre, not only in respect of the obvious contrasts drawn between the heroine's purity and her shame, but also with regard to the vectors of these states—contrastive images of light and dark.
5. attrib.
a. In the sense ‘of the nature of a (mathematical) vector, representable by a vector’; also as adj.
1846[see sense 2 a above]. 1873J. C. Maxwell Treat. Electricity & Magn. I. 9 A vector quantity has direction as well as magnitude, and is such that a reversal of its direction reverses its sign. 1880Nature XXI. 256 Some vector property (such as rotation about an axis). 1881J. W. Gibbs Sci. Papers (1906) II. 37 Maxwell has called -∇.∇u the concentration of u, whether u is scalar or vector. 1962Corson & Lorrain Introd. Electromagnetic Fields & Waves i. 1 Wind velocity, gravitational force, and electric field intensity are examples of..vector quantities. 1975Nature 18 Sept. 191/1 β-decay within isospin multiplets of Jπ = 0+ is pure vector because there is no nuclear spin to flip.
b. In the sense ‘involving (mathematical) vectors’, as vector addition, vector algebra, vector analysis, vector calculus, vector method, etc.
1873Kelland & Tait Introd. Quaternions iii. 32 (heading) Vector multiplication and division. 1881A. S. Hardy Elem. Quaternions i. 3 The operation of vector addition is commutative. 1881J. W. Gibbs Sci. Papers (1906) II. 17 An algebra or analytical method in which a single letter or other expression is used to specify a vector may be called a vector algebra or vector analysis. 1897Curry Theory Electr. & Magnetism 361 If we replace the vector-equation by its three component-equations and the vector-integrals of the latter by the above values. 1904Rep. Brit. Assoc. Adv. Sci. 1903 53, I cannot help thinking that he would have used vector methods throughout if he had found ready to hand a vector analysis instead of a theory of quaternions. 1955A. Huxley Genius & Goddess 38 The great man would get bored and quietly fade away, leaving me to solve Timmy's problem by some method a little simpler than vector analysis. 1964J. W. Linnett Electronic Struct. Molecules i. 7 The resultant angular momentum is, therefore, by vector addition..√2h/2π. 1968E. T. Copson Metric Spaces ix. 138 This is ordinary vector algebra without scalar and vector products. 1969Jane's Freight Containers 1968–69 147/2 It has been assumed..that the vector sum (the actual value of the lashing tension) will not exceed 30 400 kgf. 1972M. Kline Math. Thought xxxii. 786 By Maxwell's time a great deal of vector analysis was created by treating the scalar and vector parts of quaternions separately. 1973H. M. Schey Div, Grad, Curl, & All That i. 1 Much of vector calculus was invented for use in electromagnetic theory and is ideally suited to it. 1982Sci. Amer. Jan. 117/3 For any operation that can be applied to a single operand (such as the extraction of the square root) there is a corresponding vector operation that consists of applying the same operation to every element of a vector.
c. Particle Physics. Used to designate particles with a spin of 1; vector boson, esp. any of a group of three heavy bosons (the W{pm} and Z0, qq.v.) thought to exist as mediators of the weak interaction. [See quot. 1976.]
1942Physical Rev. LXII. 403 The β-matrices in the vector meson theory can be reduced to the simpler ζ-matrices and S matrices (spin matrices). 1949Ibid. LXXVI. 784/1 The exchange of two charged vector mesons. 1959Bull. de l'Acad. Polonaise des Sci.: Série des Sci. Math. VII. 729 Recently a hypothesis of a charged vector boson, which would mediate in weak interactions, was much discussed. 1968M. S. Livingston Particle Physics xii. 218 The agency of this weak force is presumed to be a vector boson. 1975Nature 3 Apr. 387/2 In a simple SU(4) scheme there is an obvious place for one ψ particle, in the same multiplet as the well established vector mesons ρ, ω and ϕ. 1976Sci. Amer. Jan. 46/1 They are called vector bosons because the quantum-mechanical equation that describes particles with a spin of 1 takes the form of a four-dimensional vector. 1978Nature 12 Oct. 483/1 These fermions interact through vector particles: the photon, charged and neutral massive vector bosons, and gluons, which are responsible for the electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions, respectively. 1983Ibid. 27 Jan. 285 Physicists in Geneva have discovered the intermediate vector boson.
d. Special Combs.: vector address Computers, an address specified by an interrupt vector (see sense 2 d above); vector-borne a., (of a disease or pathogen) transmitted or carried by a vector (sense 3 a above); vector field, a field defined at each point by a vector quantity; a map from a space to a space of two or more dimensions; vector function, a function whose value is a vector quantity; vector potential, a potential function that is a vector function (see potential n. 4 a); vector product, a vector function of two vectors, (a1, a2, a3) of length a and (b1, b2, b3) of length b, equal to (a2b3–a3b2, a3b1–a1b3, a1b2–a2b1), representing a vector perpendicular to them both and of magnitude ab sin θ (where θ is the angle between them); vector space, a group whose elements can be combined with each other and with the elements of a scalar field in the way that vectors can, addition within the group being commutative and associative and multiplication by a scalar being distributive and associative; vector triple product, a vector function of three three-vectors equal to the vector product of one of them with the vector product of the other two, i.e. a × (b × c).
1975R. H. Eckhouse Minicomputer Systems vi. 189 The various vector addresses and priority levels for the teletype, high-speed reader/punch, and clock on the PDP-11 are as follows. 1982R. A. Sparkes Microcomputers in Sci. Teaching v. 199 All we have to do is to change the vector address and the ISR [sc. interrupt service routine] will start by executing our routine instead.
1956Nature 25 Feb. 367/1 With its further expansion..the designation of the East African Malaria Unit has been changed to the East African Institute of Malaria and Vector-Borne Diseases. 1963Lancet 12 Jan. 109/2 This tumour..might be due to a vector-borne virus. 1971P. C. C. Garnham Progress in Parasitol. i. 3 In order to prevent too wide a diffusion of parasitology it is useful to impose some sort of restriction, and this perhaps can best be done by adding to the classical subjects of protozoology and helminthology, only vector-borne infections of other types.
1922J. B. Shaw Vector Calculus iii. 26 A vector field is a system of vectors each associated with a point of space, or a point of a surface, or a point of a line or curve. 1932[see scalar field s.v. scalar n. 2]. 1976Physics Bull. Sept. 387/3 The vector fields that are particularly relevant to cosmology are those representing the motion of particles and electric charges.
1873J. C. Maxwell Treat. Electr. & Magn. I. 10 Quantities of this class require nine numerical specifications. They are expressed in the language of Quaternions by linear and vector functions of a vector. 1971[see potential n. 4 a]. 1972M. Kline Math. Thought xxxii. 786 Maxwell noted..that the curl of a gradient of a scalar function and the divergence of the curl of a vector function are always zero.
1873, etc. Vector-potential [see potential n. 4 a]. 1881J. C. Maxwell Electr. & Magn. II. 28 The vector, whose components are F.G.H., is called the vector-potential of magnetic induction. 1962Corson & Lorrain Introd. Electromagn. Fields v. 186 We shall now show that the magnetic induction B is related to a certain quantity A through the equation B = ∇ × A, where the vector A is called..the vector potential.
1878W. K. Clifford Dynamic 95 We are led to two different kinds of product of two vectors,..a vector product..and a scalar product. 1901[see scalar triple product s.v. scalar n. 2]. 1965[see outer product s.v. outer a. 3]. 1972A. G. Howson Handbk. Terms Algebra & Anal. xxxiv. 169 Given two vectors a.., b..we define their vector product (cross product or outer product) denoted by a × b (or a {logicand} b).
1937A. A. Albert Mod. Higher Algebra 319/2 (Index), Vector space; see Linear set. 1965[see sense 2 b above]. 1970Nature 19 Dec. 1234/2 A vector space is built up linearly by means of ‘scalar’ multipliers from a number field. 1972A. G. Howson Handbk. Terms Algebra & Analysis viii. 39 Homomorphisms of vector spaces..preserve linear combinations of the type λ1a1 + λ2a2 +{ddd}+ λnan.
1901Gibbs & Wilson Vector Analysis ii. 72 The vector triple product may be used to express that component of a vector B which is perpendicular to a given vector A. 1964Vector triple product [see scalar triple product s.v. scalar n. 2].
▪ II. vector, v.|ˈvɛktə(r)|
[f. the n.]
trans. a. To direct (an aircraft) on its course or towards a target.
1945Radar 34 If the pilot had to ditch, the radar set spotted where he went down, vectoring out to that exact spot the air-sea rescue planes. 1958Daily Mail 24 Oct. 9/2 If the pilot of a military aircraft wants to cross one of the ten-mile-wide airways radiating from the big airports..he can be ‘vectored’ across by R.A.F. radar. 1976B. Jackson Flameout i. 20 He'd been first officer of a DC-8 vectored over Newark when a Constellation had collided with the jet.
b. gen. To direct, esp. towards a destination; to change the direction of.
1966New Scientist 27 Jan. 213/3 A flexible cup to hold a rocket's nozzle and so allow it to be vectored or swung for steering purposes. 1978K. Amis Jake's Thing ii. 20 This time Brenda's tone was warm but the warmth was firmly vectored on her friend. 1979Kraft & Toy Mini/Microcomputer Hardware Design viii. 391 The address found..vectors the processor to the appropriate device service routine. 1983Your Computer Aug. 21/2 Version 1.2 contains several new features, such as the ability to vector output to one of a number of outputs.
Hence ˈvectored ppl. a.; vectored thrust, thrust that can be varied in direction.
1960Aeroplane XCVIII. 261/1 The Ryan VZ-3RY Vertiplane ‘vectored-slipstream’ VTOL research aircraft was destroyed early this month during a test flight. 1962Flight International LXXXI. 234/1 The future will undoubtedly see larger, heavier and more complex VTOL aircraft using the principle of ‘vectored thrust’. 1973Black World May 6/2 Our scholars and leaders and common people must have vectored minds if we are to prevail. This means we must actively seek stabilizing forces. 1982Daily Tel. 15 June 3/1 He knew of no occasion in which a Harrier had found it necessary to use the special jump⁓jet tactic of using vectored thrust..to hop out of the way of an attacking aircraft. |