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Synonyms

orbital

American  
[awr-bi-tl] / ˈɔr bɪ tl /

adjective

  1. of or relating to an orbit.

noun

  1. Physics, Chemistry.

    1. a wave function describing the state of a single electron in an atom atomic orbital or in a molecule molecular orbital.

    2. the electron in that state.

orbital British  
/ ˈɔːbɪtəl /

adjective

  1. of or denoting an orbit

  2. (of a motorway or major road circuit) circling a large city

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

noun

  1. a region surrounding an atomic nucleus in which the probability distribution of the electrons is given by a wave function

  2. an orbital road

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

  • interorbital adjective
  • interorbitally adverb
  • orbitally adverb
  • preorbital adjective
  • superorbital adjective
  • transorbital adjective
  • unorbital adjective
  • unorbitally adverb

Etymology

Origin of orbital

1535–45; < New Latin, Medieval Latin orbitālis; orbit, -al 1

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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.

SpaceX accounts for more than half of all orbital launches worldwide, and its Starlink broadband service has more than 10,000 satellites in orbit and more than 10 million subscribers.

From Barron's • Apr. 1, 2026

Extremely risky orbital reconstruction surgery was a possibility, along with a donor nerve, or a full donor eye.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 30, 2026

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and others are also racing to create orbital AI data centers.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 27, 2026

Although orbital angular momentum entanglement has been widely explored, it has often been considered fragile.

From Science Daily • Mar. 21, 2026

Soon after John Mayer put on the Space Task Group jersey, Carl Huss and Ted Skopinski followed suit, making Katherine the natural inheritor of the research report that would describe Project Mercury’s orbital flight.

From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.