spherical
Americanadjective
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shaped like a sphere
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of or relating to a sphere
spherical geometry
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geometry formed on the surface of or inside a sphere
a spherical triangle
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of or relating to heavenly bodies
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of or relating to the spheres of the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system
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Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of spherical
1515–25; < Late Latin sphēric ( us ) ( see spherics 1) + -al 1
Explanation
A ball is spherical; it's shaped like a sphere — a three-dimensional version of the two-dimensional circle. The ball image is a good one since the word sphere comes from very similar-sounding Greek and Latin words, both of which mean "ball." The word sphere, however, has much broader usage: we use it in to discussing astronomy, our earth, even our social rank (as in "one's sphere of influence"). Spherical, by contrast, has a much more limited use. It basically is a description of shape: if it's spherical, it simply looks like a ball.
Vocabulary lists containing spherical
50 Great Words from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
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2015 Spelling Bee - Words from Round 2
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Unit 2: Evolution
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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.
Instead, they are theoretical unstable configurations of particle fields that, like quantum black holes, would be expected to produce relatively spherical energy patterns.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 23, 2026
The current West End production includes the massive, ornate spherical chandelier and the stage-to-ceiling travel — “a happy medium between the two worlds,” said Sklar-Heyn.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
A spherical object similar to those discovered this weekend was also found in remote grassland in Namibia, southern Africa, in 2011.
From BBC ● Jul. 5, 2026
This allowed them to determine the lifetimes of the first excited nuclear states and estimate how much the nuclei were distorted from a spherical shape.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 8, 2026
Earth’s oblateness—the fact that it was not perfectly spherical but slightly squat, like a mandarin orange—needed to be specified, as did the speed of the planet’s rotation.
From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
