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gibbous

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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A gibbous moon (sense 2)

Etymology

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From Middle English gibbous, from Latin gibbus (“humped, hunched”), probably cognate with cubō (“bend oneself, lie down”), Italian gobba (“humpback”), Ancient Greek κῡφός (kūphós, “humpback, bent”), κύβος (kúbos, “cube, vertebra”), Spanish giboso (“humped”). Also ultimately compare dialectal Norwegian keiv (“slanted, wrong”), German schief (“crooked, slanting”) and Dutch scheef (“crooked, slanting”).

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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gibbous (comparative more gibbous, superlative most gibbous)

  1. Curved or bulged outward.
  2. (astronomy, of a celestial body) Having more than half (but not the whole) of its disc illuminated.
    Coordinate term: crescent
    • 1995, Dava Sobel, Longitude, Herper Perennial, published 2011, →ISBN, page 89:
      The moving moon, full, gibbous, or crescent-shaped, shone at last for the navigators of the eighteenth century like a luminous hand on the clock of heaven.
    • 2021, Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness, Canongate Books, published 2022, page 252:
      On December 7, 1972, the Apollo 17 astronauts took a photograph of a gibbous Earth at a distance of eighteen thousand miles from its surface.
  3. Humpbacked.
    • 1697, Virgil, “The Eighth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
      A pointed flinty rock, all bare and black,
      Grew gibbous from behind the mountain's back;

Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “gibbous”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
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