Orthogonal

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Orthogonal \Or*thog"o*nal\, a. [Cf. F. orthogonal.]
     Right-angled; rectangular; as, an orthogonal intersection of
     one curve with another.
     [1913 Webster]
  
     {Orthogonal projection}. See under {Orthographic}.


        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  orthogonal
       adj 1: not pertinent to the matter under consideration; "an issue
              extraneous to the debate"; "the price was immaterial";
              "mentioned several impertinent facts before finally
              coming to the point" [syn: {extraneous}, {immaterial},
               {impertinent}]
       2: statistically unrelated
       3: having a set of mutually perpendicular axes; meeting at
          right angles; "wind and sea may displace the ship's center
          of gravity along three orthogonal axes"; "a rectangular
          Cartesian coordinate system" [syn: {rectangular}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  35 Moby Thesaurus words for "orthogonal":
     cube-shaped, cubed, cubic, cubiform, cuboid, diced, foursquare,
     normal, oblong, orthodiagonal, orthometric, perpendicular, plumb,
     plunging, precipitous, quadrangular, quadrate, quadriform,
     quadrilateral, rectangular, rhombic, rhomboid, right-angle,
     right-angled, right-angular, sheer, square, steep, straight-up,
     straight-up-and-down, tetragonal, tetrahedral, trapezohedral,
     trapezoid, up-and-down
  
  

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  orthogonal adj. [from mathematics] Mutually independent; well
     separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of its
     mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or capabilities
     that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the entire `capability
     space' of the system and are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually
     independent. For example, in architectures such as the PDP-11 or VAX
     where all or nearly all registers can be used interchangeably in any
     role with respect to any instruction, the register set is said to be
     orthogonal. Or, in logic, the set of operators `not' and `or' is
     orthogonal, but the set `nand', `or', and `not' is not (because any one
     of these can be expressed in terms of the others). Also used in comments
     on human discourse: "This may be orthogonal to the discussion, but...."
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  orthogonal
       
           At 90 degrees (right angles).
       
          N mutually orthogonal {vectors} {span} an N-dimensional
          {vector space}, meaning that, any vector in the space can be
          expressed as a {linear combination} of the vectors.  This is
          true of any set of N {linearly independent} vectors.
       
          The term is used loosely to mean mutually independent or well
          separated.  It is used to describe sets of primitives or
          capabilities that, like linearly independent vectors in
          geometry, span the entire "capability space" and are in some
          sense non-overlapping or mutually independent.  For example,
          in logic, the set of operators "not" and "or" is described as
          orthogonal, but the set "nand", "or", and "not" is not
          (because any one of these can be expressed in terms of the
          others).
       
          Also used loosely to mean "irrelevant to", e.g. "This may be
          orthogonal to the discussion, but ...", similar to "going off
          at a tangent".
       
          See also {orthogonal instruction set}.
       
          [{Jargon File}]
       
          (2002-12-02)