abscissa
noun
(in plane Cartesian coordinates) the x-coordinate of a point: its distance from the y-axis measured parallel to the x-axis.
abscissas
-
pluralof abscissa.plural
The grammatical form denoting more than one person, place, thing, or idea.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
By the end of the day, the sand is crisscrossed with a mesh of ordinates, abscissas, curves to account for everything in nature.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
In permeability curves the total magnetization of the given pieces of iron are plotted as abscissas, while the corresponding permeabilities are plotted as ordinates.
From Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. by Kempster Miller
He does not see the combinations of the abscissas and ordinates very clearly.
From The Life of the fly; with which are interspersed some chapters of autobiography by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
The areas of the wound are plotted as ordinates with the respective times of observation measured in days as abscissas.
From Manhood of Humanity. by Alfred Korzybski
We take now for the axis of abscissas the diameter PQ, and the conjugate diameter for the axis of ordinates.
From An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry by Derrick Norman Lehmer
