PRECESSION

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does precession mean? 

• PRECESSION (noun)
  The noun PRECESSION has 2 senses:

1. the motion of a spinning body (as a top) in which it wobbles so that the axis of rotation sweeps out a cone

2. the act of preceding in time or order or rank (as in a ceremony)

  Familiarity information: PRECESSION used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PRECESSION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The motion of a spinning body (as a top) in which it wobbles so that the axis of rotation sweeps out a cone

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

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

motion (a state of change)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The act of preceding in time or order or rank (as in a ceremony)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

precedence; precedency; precession

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

activity (any specific behavior)

Derivation:

precede (be the predecessor of)

precede (come before)

precede (be earlier in time; go back further)

 Context examples 

Theory that proposes large scale climate changes are due in part to the variations in precession, eccentricity and obliquity that affects the amount of solar radiation received by the earth.

(Orbital forcing, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)

In the process, they were able to identify ranges in the disc’s mass, its ‘roundness’ (or eccentricity), and forced gradual shifts in its orientations (or precession rate), which faithfully reproduced the outlier TNO orbits.

(Mystery orbits in outermost reaches of solar system not caused by ‘Planet Nine’, University of Cambridge)

He was a stern, gaunt man, with a harsh voice, and an aggressive manner, but he had the merit of knowing how to assimilate the ideas of other men, and to pass them on in a way which was intelligible and even interesting to the lay public, with a happy knack of being funny about the most unlikely objects, so that the precession of the Equinox or the formation of a vertebrate became a highly humorous process as treated by him.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)