Category:Wave

Wave, v. t.

Defn: see wave. Sir h. Wotton. Burke.

Wave Wave, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Waved; p. pr. & vb. n. Waving.] Etym: [oe. waven, as. wafian to waver, to hesitate, to wonder; akin to wæfre wavering, restless, mhg. wabern to be in motion, icel. vafra to hover about; cf. Icel. vafa to vibrate. Cf. Waft, waver.]

1. To play loosely; to move like a wave, one way and the other; to float; to flutter; to undulate. His purple robes waved careless to the winds. Trumbull. Where the flags of three nations has successively waved. Hawthorne.

2. To be moved to and fro as a signal. B. Jonson.

3. To fluctuate; to waver; to be in an unsettled state; to vacillate. [obs.] He waved indifferently 'twixt doing them neither good nor harm. Shak.

Wave Wave, v. t.

1. To move one way and the other; to brandish. "[æneas] waved his fatal sword." Dryden.

2. To raise into inequalities of surface; to give an undulating form a surface to. Horns whelked and waved like the enridged sea. Shak.

3. To move like a wave, or by floating; to waft. [obs.] Sir t. Browne.

4. To call attention to, or give a direction or command to, by a waving motion, as of the hand; to signify by waving; to beckon; to signal; to indicate. Look, with what courteous action it waves you to a more removed ground. Shak. She spoke, and bowing waved dismissal. Tennyson.

Wave Wave, n. Etym: [from wave, v.; not the same word as oe. wawe, waghe, A wave, which is akin to e. wag to move. Wave, v. i.]

1. An advancing ridge or swell on the surface of a liquid, as of the sea, resulting from the oscillatory motion of the particles composing it when disturbed by any force their position of rest; an undulation. The wave behind impels the wave before. Pope.

2. (physics)

Defn: a vibration propagated from particle to particle through a body or elastic medium, as in the transmission of sound; an assemblage of vibrating molecules in all phases of a vibration, with no phase repeated; a wave of vibration; an undulation. See undulation.

3. Water; a body of water. [poetic] "deep drank Lord Marmion of the wave." Sir w. Scott. Build a ship to save thee from the flood, i 'll furnish thee with fresh wave, bread, and wine. Chapman.

4. Unevenness; inequality of surface. Sir i. Newton.

5. A waving or undulating motion; a signal made with the hand, a flag, etc.

6. The undulating line or streak of luster on cloth watered, or calendered, or on damask steel.

7. Fig.: A swelling or excitement of thought, feeling, or energy; a tide; as, waves of enthusiasm. Wave front (physics), the surface of initial displacement of the particles in a medium, as a wave of vibration advances. -- wave length (physics), the space, reckoned in the direction of propagation, occupied by a complete wave or undulation, as of light, sound, etc.; the distance from a point or phase in a wave to the nearest point at which the same phase occurs. -- wave line (shipbuilding), a line of a vessel's hull, shaped in accordance with the wave-line system. -- wave-line system, wave-line theory (shipbuilding), a system or theory of designing the lines of a vessel, which takes into consideration the length and shape of a wave which travels at a certain speed. -- wave loaf, a loaf for a wave offering. Lev. viii. 27. -- wave moth (zoöl.), any one of numerous species of small geometrid moths belonging to acidalia and allied genera; -- so called from the wavelike color markings on the wings. -- wave offering, an offering made in the jewish services by waving the object, as a loaf of bread, toward the four cardinal points. Numbers 18:11. -- wave of vibration (physics), a wave which consists in, or is occasioned by, the production and transmission of a vibratory state from particle to particle through a body. -- wave surface. (a) (physics) a surface of simultaneous and equal displacement of the particles composing a wave of vibration. (b) (geom.) A mathematical surface of the fourth order which, upon certain hypotheses, is the locus of a wave surface of light in the interior of crystals. It is used in explaining the phenomena of double refraction. See under refraction. -- wave theory. (physics) see undulatory theory, under undulatory.