eccentricity
eccentricity Lexical Profile
eccentricity Game Scores & Validity
• noun
The quality of being unconventional and slightly strange in behavior, appearance, or character; an unusual or peculiar habit or trait.
"The professor was famous on campus for his harmless eccentricity of wearing mismatched socks to every lecture."
In geometry and astronomy, a dimensionless parameter associated with every conic section that measures how much an orbit or curve deviates from being perfectly circular.
"Halley's Comet has a high orbital eccentricity, causing it to travel along a steep, elongated ellipse around the sun."
• Rhymes for eccentricity
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
Borrowed from French excentricité or Medieval Latin eccentricitas, from Ancient Greek ekkentros ('out of the center'), combining ek- ('out of') and kentron ('center'). It was originally used in astronomy to describe planetary orbits whose centers did not coincide with the Earth.