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English
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
Ancient Greek κλῑ́νω (klī́nō, “to lean, incline”). Introduced by English evolutionary biologist and eugenicist Julian Huxley in 1938 after British mycologist John Ramsbottom suggested the term.
Noun
cline (plural clines)
- (systematics) A gradation in a character or phenotype within a species or other group.
- Any graduated continuum.
2005, Ronnie Cann, Ruth Kempson, Lutz Marten, The Dynamics of Language, an Introduction, page 412:This account effectively reconstructs the well-known grammaticalisation cline from anaphora to agreement, …
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
References
- ^ Julian Huxley (1938 July 30) “Clines: an Auxiliary Taxonomic Principle”, in Nature, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, retrieved 2021-11-09, pages 219–220: “Some special term seems desirable to direct attention to variation within groups, and I propose the word cline, meaning a gradation in measurable characters. […] I have also to thank Dr. J. Ramsbottom for suggesting cline as the best term to denote gradation.”
Etymology 2
From c(ircle) + line; compare circline.
Noun
cline (plural clines)
- (geometry, inversive geometry) A generalized circle.
2001, Michael Henle, Modern Geometries: Non-Euclidean, Projective, and Discrete, page 77:Let C1 and C2 be two nonintersecting clines. Prove that there is a unique pair of points that are simultaneously symmetric to both C1 and C2.
2009, Michael P. Hitchman, Geometry with an Introduction to Cosmic Topology, page 64:To visualize Möbius transformations, it is helpful to focus on fixed points and, in the case of two fixed points, on two families of clines with respect to these points.
- 2011, Dominique Michelucci, What is a Line?, Pascal Schreck, Julien Narboux, Jürgen Richter-Gebert (editors), Automated Deduction in Geometry, 8th International Workshop, ADG 2010, Revised Selected Papers, LNAI 6877, page 139,
- Let Ω be a fixed, arbitrary, point. Then circles (in the classical sense) through Ω can be considered as lines. For convenience, such circles are called clines in this section. Two distinct clines cut in one point (ignoring Ω and the two cyclic points); it can happen that Ω is a double intersection point; in this case, one may say that the two clines are parallel, and that they meet at a point at infinity, which is Ω.
Synonyms
Further reading
- “cline”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
Anagrams