spherical

Academic Word List, sublist 9.

About 5.25 uses per million words.

Meaning

1. adjective Shaped as a sphere; being a sphere.
2. adjective Of, or pertaining to, spheres.
3. adjective Of a coordinate system, specifying the location of a point in a plane by using a radius and two angles.
4. adjective Of or relating to the heavenly orbs, or to the sphere or spheres in which, according to ancient astronomy and astrology, they were set.
5. adjective Of a multivariate probability distribution, to have a covariance matrix equal to the identity matrix up to a multiplicative factor.

   a spherical Gaussian distribution

Similar words

spheric globular globose orbicular round circular global ball-shaped globoid sphere

Often followed by

aberration surface and particles shape or shell harmonics coordinates

Word family

sphere spheres spherically