English Explanatory Dictionary

polytope

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A geometric shape (of any number of dimensions) which is fully enclosed and has flat sides, making it a member of the generalized class of shapes which includes the two-dimensional polygon and three-dimensional polyhedron; (formally) a finite region of n-dimensional space bounded by hyperplanes.

Pronunciation

/ˈpɒlɪˌtəʊp/ /ˈpɒliːˌtəʊp/ /ˈpɑliˌtoʊp/ LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-polytope.wav

Word forms

polytope polytopes

Etymology

Learned borrowing from German Polytop, originally coined by German mathematician Reinhold Hoppe in 1882, and first used in English by British mathematician Alicia Boole Stott in her 1910 paper Geometrical deduction of semiregular from regular polytopes and space fillings. By surface analysis, poly- (“many”) + -tope (“surface”), from Ancient Greek τόπος (tópos, “region; area”).

Related words

polytopic

Derived words

0-polytope 1-polytope 2-polytope 3-polytope 4-polytope 5-polytope abstract polytope Birkhoff polytope chiral polytope convex polytope cross-polytope cyclic polytope Hanner polytope integral polytope matroid polytope n-polytope parallelotope pentagonal polytope polytopal random polytope regular polytope uniform polytope zonotope
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