| 释义 |
cyclical, a.|ˈsaɪklɪkəl, ˈsɪ-|
[f. as prec. + -al1.]
1. Of a line: Returning into itself so as to form a closed curve. rare.
1817Coleridge Biog. Lit. 122 [The point] must flow back again on itself; that is, there arises a cyclical line which does inclose a space.
b. Of a letter: Circular, encyclical. rare.
1879Farrar St. Paul I. 434 The genuineness of this cyclical letter is evinced by its extreme naturalness.
2. = cyclic 1.
a1834Coleridge (W.), Time, cyclical time, was their abstraction of the Deity. 1837Sir F. Palgrave Merch. & Friar iii. (1844) 78 Modes of thought, not cyclical, but successive. 1854Moseley Astron. lxxix. (ed. 4) 219 The changes of the planetary orbits must return in certain cyclical periods. 1861E. Smith (title), Health and Disease, as influenced by the Daily, Seasonal, and other Cyclical Changes in the Human System.
b. Belonging to a definite chronological cycle.
1838Arnold Hist. Rome I. xviii. 382 The truce..was to last only for forty cyclical years of ten months each. 1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) III. 579 Plato also speaks of an ‘annus magnus’ or cyclical year.
3. = cyclic 2.
1841De Quincey Homer Wks. VI. 293 The many epic and cyclical poems which arose during post-Homeric ages. 1873Symonds Grk. Poets vii. (1877) 203 The cyclical poets.
4. Bot.
a. Rolled up circularly, as the embryos of many seeds.
b. Arranged in whorls, verticillate; hence transf. in Zool.
1866in Treas. Bot. 1870Hooker Stud. Flora 36 Wartcress..embryo in some species cyclical. 1881W. B. Carpenter Microscope 546 We find in the nautiloid spire a tendency to pass..into the cyclical mode of growth.
5. cyclical number: (see quot.).
1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) III. 113 A perfect or cyclical number, i.e. a number in which the sum of the divisors equals the whole. |