PENDULUM

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does pendulum mean? 

• PENDULUM (noun)
  The noun PENDULUM has 1 sense:

1. an apparatus consisting of an object mounted so that it swings freely under the influence of gravity

  Familiarity information: PENDULUM used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PENDULUM (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An apparatus consisting of an object mounted so that it swings freely under the influence of gravity

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("pendulum" is a kind of...):

apparatus; setup (equipment designed to serve a specific function)

Meronyms (parts of "pendulum"):

bob (a hanging weight, especially a metal ball on a string)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "pendulum"):

Foucault pendulum (pendulum with a long wire; can swing in any direction; the change in the swing plane demonstrates the earth's rotation)

metronome (clicking pendulum indicates the exact tempo of a piece of music)

compound pendulum; physical pendulum (pendulum consisting of an actual object allowed to rotate freely around a horizontal axis)

simple pendulum (a hypothetical pendulum suspended by a weightless frictionless thread of constant length)

 Context examples 

Her lips were slightly parted, and her breast rose and fell with the regularity of a pendulum.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

All the little duties were faithfully done each day, and many of her sisters' also, for they were forgetful, and the house seemed like a clock whose pendulum was gone a-visiting.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Impelled by the blows that rained upon him, now from this side, now from that, White Fang swung back and forth like an erratic and jerky pendulum.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

On this occasion she was so much disturbed in mind as to find it necessary to open the bedroom door, and make a course for herself, comprising the full extent of the bedrooms from wall to wall; and while Mr. Dick and I sat quietly by the fire, she kept passing in and out, along this measured track, at an unchanging pace, with the regularity of a clock-pendulum.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

At such moments, starting from a windward roll, I would go flying through the air with dizzying swiftness, as though I clung to the end of a huge, inverted pendulum, the arc of which, between the greater rolls, must have been seventy feet or more.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The great novelist vibrated between two decanters with the regularity of a pendulum; the famous divine flirted openly with one of the Madame de Staels of the age, who looked daggers at another Corinne, who was amiably satirizing her, after outmaneuvering her in efforts to absorb the profound philosopher, who imbibed tea Johnsonianly and appeared to slumber, the loquacity of the lady rendering speech impossible.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)