pentad

American  

[pen-tad] / ˈpɛn tæd /

noun

1. a period of five years.

2. a group of five.

3. the number five.

4. Chemistry. a pentavalent element or group.

5. Climatology. a period of five consecutive days.

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pentad British  

/ ˈpɛntæd /

noun

1. a group or series of five

2. the number or sum of five

3. a period of five years

4. chem a pentavalent element, atom, or radical

5. meteorol a period of five days

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Etymology

Origin of pentad

First recorded in 1645–55; from Greek pentad- (stem of pentás ) group of five; see origin at pent-, -ad ¹

Example Sentences

In the pentad of 1923-27, U. S. investors paid $34,806,783,000 for 36,965 different issues of bonds and stocks.

From Time Magazine Archive

Colours may best be expressed by a heptad, the largest possible formula for things finite, as the pentad is the smallest possible form.

From Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Coleridge, Henry Nelson

Five, or the pentad, is everything; it stops the power of poisons, and is dreaded by evil spirits.

From Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing by Cutten, George Barton

The 'even' in the Sûtra is meant to intimate that the 'five five-people' can in no way mean the twenty-five categories, since there is no pentad of groups consisting of five each.

From The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja — Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 by Thibaut, George

C. Wachsmuth.—The pentad arrangement in Dio and others.

From Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek during the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form by Dio, Cassius