sphere (sfer)

[Early mod. E. also sphear, spheare, also sphære (with vowel as in L.); earlier (and still dial.) spere, Hence-2. A rounded body, approximately spherical; a ball; a globe. The Lieutenant's evidence was as round, complete, and lucid as a Japanese sphere of rock-crystal. O. W. Holmes , Old Vol. of Life, p. 55. 5825 3. An orbicular body representing the earth or the apparent heavens, or illustrating their astronomical relations. Hence-4. The visible spherical longing to a tetrahedron in which the four perpendiculars from the summits upon the opposite faces intersect in one point, this sphere pa ing through the four feet of these perpendiculars and consequently also through the Then shall the righteous shine like glorious starres Within the sphear of heaven. Sweet Echo, .. Times' Whistle (E. E. T. S.), p. 6. Sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere . Milton , Comus, 1. 241. 1, An eagle, clang an eagle to the sphere. Tennyson, Prince , iii. 5. One of the supposed concentric and eccentric revolving rigid and transparent shells called crystalline, in which, according to the old astronomers (following Eudoxus), the stars, sun, moon, and planets were severally set, and by which they were carried in such a manner as to produce their apparent motions. The term is now generally restricted to the sphere of the fixed stars, and is recognized as a convenient fiction. It is also loosely applied to the planets themselves. After shewede he hym the nyne speres ; And after that the melodye herde he That cometh of thilke speres thryes three, That welle is of musik and melodye In this world here and cause of harmonye. Chaucer , Parliament of Fowls, 1. 59. Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven! Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, v. 4. Hence - 6t. An orbicular field or course of movement; an orbit, as that of a heavenly body or of the eye; a circuit. As Mars in three-score yeares doth run his spheare , The spheare of Cupid fourty yeares containes. Spenser, Sonnets, lx. Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres. Shak., Hamlet, i. 5. 17. 7. Place or scene of action; the space within which movement is made or operations are carried on; a circumscribed region of action: as, the sphere of a mi ion; the spheres (fuller, spheres of influence) of the different European powers and trading companies in Africa. The foure elementes wherof the body of man is compacte. be set in their places called spheris , higher or lower accordynge to the soueraintie of theyr natures. Sir T. Elyot , The Govern our, i. 1. All this while the King had mov'd within his own Sphere , and had done nothing out of the Realm. Baker , Chronicles, p. 403. Our South African sphere seems better suited for European settlement than is the Tunisian protectorate of Sir C. W. Dilke , Probs. of Greater Britain, v. 8. Position or rank in society; position or cla France. with reference to social distinctions. Pleas'd, or not pleas'd, if we be Englands King, And mightiest in the Spheare in which we moove, Wee'le shine alone, this Phaeton cast downe. Heywood, Royal King (Works, ed. Pearson, 1874, VI. 29). I saw her [Marie Antoinette] just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in. Burke, Rev. in France. 9. Circuit or radius, as of knowledge, influence, or activity; definite or circumscribed range; determinate limit of any mental or physical course: as, the sphere of diplomacy. This being wholly out of my sphere , I can give no account of them. Dampier , Voyages, II. i. 126. Nature to each allots his proper Sphere . Congreve, Of Pleasing. Armillary sphere. See armillary. - Axis of a sphere. See axis1.- Circle of the sphere. See circle. - Colloid, dialing, direct sphere. See the qualifying words. Copernican sphere, an armillary sphere with the add i second sphere representing sun, central to a divided circle representing the ecliptic. - Doctrine of the sphere, the elements of the geometry of figures drawn upon the surface of a sphere.- Epidermic spheres. Same as epithelial pearls (which see, under pearl). - Geometry of spheres, a branch of geometry in which the lines of Plucker's geometry of lines are replaced by spheres, and the intersections of lines by the contact of spheres. - Harmony or music of the spheres. See harmony. - Logical sphere, the subject or ultimate antecedent of a statement, or the objects which a term denotes. - Magic sphere. See magic. - Oblique sphere, the sphere of the heavens, or another sphere representing that, as it appears at a station where the angle between is the same sphere for an equatorial station where the angle is a right angle, and the parallel sphere is the same where the angle vanishes-that is, for a polar station. equator the horizon is oblique. The right sphere Osculating sphere of a non-plane curve, the sphere circles on a sphere. See parallel. — Parallel sphere. See oblique sphere. - Power of a sphere in regard to another, the squared distance of the two centers le the sum of the squares of the radii. Clifford. - Projection of the sphere. See map - projection, under projection. - Radical sphere, a sphere orthogonally cutting four spheres having their centers at the summits of the tetrahedron of coördinates. Right sphere. See oblique sphere. - Sector of a sphere. See sector. - Segmentation sphere. See segmentation. - Segment of a sphere. See segment. -Sphere at infinity. See infinity, 3.- Twelve-point sphere. (a) A sphere (discovered by Prouhet in 1863) be consecutive points curve. - Parallel points of the lines from the vertices to the common intersections of the perpendiculars aforesaid. (b) More generally, a sphere (discovered in 1884 by the Italian mathematician Intrigila) belonging to any tetrahedron, and pa ing thruogh the four feet of the perpendiculars from the summits upon the opposite faces, and consequently also through the mid-points of the lines from the summits to the center of the hyperboloid of which these perpendiculars are generators, and through the orthogonal projections of these points upon the opposite faces. =Syn. 1-3. Orb, Ball, etc. See globe. sphere (sfer), v. t.; pret. and pp. sphered, ppr. sphering. [ Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek Outswell the colic of puff'd Aquilon. Shak., T. and C., iv. 5. 8. IMG:content-1720.jpg:[graphic] IMG:content-1721.png:[blocks in formation] Herrick, His Age. sphere-crystals (sfēr'kristalz), n . pl . In bot ., same as sphæraphides . spherele (sfer'les), a . [ sphere + -le .] Having no sphere; wandering; unrestrained. Let the horsemen's scimitars Wheel and flash, like spherele stars, Thirsting to eclipse their burning In a sea of death and mourning. Shelley, Masque of Anarchy, st. 79. sphere-yeast (sfēr'yēst), n. In bot . , an aggregation of certain sprouting forms of the genus Mucor : formerly so called from a resemblance in shape to the saccharomycete of yeast.