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Acute angle   /əkjˈut ˈæŋgəl/   Listen
Acute angle

noun
1.
An angle less than 90 degrees but more than 0 degrees.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Acute angle" Quotes from Famous Books



... striking across Sebaiyeh to the right, keeping Sinai in view, we stopped to contemplate the scene. Here the plain is very wide, and forms one with Wady Sedout, which enters it from the south-east at a very acute angle, and in the whole of which Sinai is plainly visible. These two wadys make a width of at least the third of a mile. The hills rising from the east and south of Sebaiyeh, in front of Sinai, are of gentle ascent, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... with the pointed beard was already slanting it forward at a more than usually acute angle, with the smile ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... as he stared, white-faced, with parted lips, the pencil rose, hesitated, quivered; but, instead of falling back again, hung so for a moment on its point, forming with itself an acute angle with the plane of the table in an entirely impossible position; then, once more rising higher, swung on its point in a quarter circle, and after one more pause and quiver, rose to its full height, remained poised one instant, then fell with a sudden movement, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... watched the dog as it walked round its master smelling the snow, then turning up its pointed nose interrogatively and waving its magnificent feathery tail. The oblique eyes, acute angle of his short ears, the thick neck, broad chest, and heavy forelegs, gave an impression of mingled alertness and strength you will not see surpassed in any animal that walks the world. Jet-black, except for his grey muzzle and broad chest, he looks at you with the face of ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... attached by their hinder ends to those little projections of the pyramids which point forwards (pl. VII, 3, 3), and by their front ends to the centre of the shield (pl. VII, 6), where the two plates meet under a more or less acute angle. ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke

... as all the wood and jungle within the enclosure is left standing, its interior forms a complete labyrinth. On each side of the door a line of small trees, stuck up in the snow fifteen or twenty yards apart, form two sides of an acute angle, widening gradually from the entrance, from which they sometimes extend two or three miles. Between these rows of brushwood runs the path frequented by the deer. When all things are prepared, the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... So, too, in the triumphal arches of the Roman Emperors little attention was paid to the relative and varying attitudes of the bas-reliefs. From Greek art the Parthenon Frieze gives a singular example of this unrealised law. When in situ the frieze was only visible at a most acute angle and in a most unfavourable light: beyond the steps it vanished altogether, so one was obliged to stand among the columns to see it at all, and it was also necessary to look upwards almost perpendicularly. ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... court, and it appeared to Bristol that there was a hole in one of these, the furthermost from the corner. A tiny beam of light shone from the bank window on to the reflector, or from the reflector on to the window, which circumstance in itself was not curious. But above the reflector, at an acute angle, this mysterious beam was seemingly projected upward. Walking a little way up the court he saw that it shone through, and cast a disc of light upon the ceiling of an office on the first floor ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... knowing that of all thirsts in this world the afternoon thirst is the very worst, saddled their camels, and mounted to the usual groaning and snarling. The detachment moved northwestward from Sinkat, at an acute angle to its morning's march. It skirted the hills opposite to the pass from which it had descended in the morning. The bushes grew sparse. It came into a black country of stones scantily relieved ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... die, although at present she kept Death at a safe distance by hygienic means and dietary treatment. The house was a queer survival of three centuries, with a pattern of black oak beams let into a white-washed front. Its roof shot up into a high gable at an acute angle, and was tiled with red clay squares, mellowed by Time to the hue of rusty iron. A long lattice with diamond panes, and geraniums in flower-pots behind them, extended across the lower storey; two little jutting windows, also of the criss-cross pattern, looked like two eyes in the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... the inner edge of the track, where a big rock abutted upon the acute angle which the path made in circumventing the forest-clad hill-side. Placing their "swags" on the path the two men clambered up behind the rock, and Tresco could hear their conversation as he lay behind the thick scrub ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... The leaves are four feet long, and some of the stalks, though not thicker than a man's thumb, above one hundred and twenty: Mr Banks and Dr Solander examined some of them, over which we sounded and had fourteen fathom, which is eighty-four feet; and as they made a very acute angle with the bottom, they were thought to be at least one-half longer: The foot-stalks were swelled into an air vessel, and Mr Banks and Dr Solander called this plant Fucus giganteus. Upon the report of the master, I stood in with the ship; but not trusting implicitly to his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... tubing of 1.5 cm. diameter. The Bunsen flame is applied to a spot some 5 cm. from one end of such a piece of tubing and the tube slightly drawn out to form a constriction, the constricted part is bent in the bat's-wing flame, to an acute angle, and the open extremity of the long arm sealed off in the blowpipe flame. The open end of the short arm is rounded off and then plugged with cotton-wool, and the tube ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... the cards made from it are more readily placed about the plant without being torn. The blade of the tool, which should be made by an expert blacksmith, is formed from a band of steel, bent in the form of a half hexagon, and then taking an acute angle, reaches nearly to the center, as shown in Fig. 232. The part making the star-shaped cut is formed from a separate piece of steel, so attached to the handle as to make a close joint with the blade. The latter is beveled ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... in the most absolute fashion, that M. Beautrelet was somewhere in the neighborhood. If not, how was it conceivable that people should travel nearly three hundred miles across France in order to telephone from Chateauroux and next to return, at an acute angle, ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... this doleful annunciation, he assumed a posture of silent dejection, shaking his head slowly with the motion of a pendulum when it is ceasing to vibrate, and then remained stationary, his body stooping at a more acute angle than usual, and the latter part of ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... line of light passing from the sun to the moon. At this moment, then, the imaginary lines joining the sun, the moon, and the earth, make a right angle triangle. But the properties of the right-angle triangle had long been studied and were well under stood. One acute angle of such a triangle determines the figure of the triangle itself. We have already seen that Thales, the very earliest of the Greek philosophers, measured the distance of a ship at sea by the application of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... throughout the night. Though coitus was frequently resorted to, these symptoms continued. He sought aid at the London Hospital, but the priapism was persistent, and when he left, on May 10th, the penis formed an acute angle with the pubes, and he again had free intercourse with the same female. At the time of leaving England the penis made an angle of about 45 degrees with the pubes, and this condition, he affirmed, lasted three months. On his return to England ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... in a soft, argillaceous stratum, lay the organism. It was about four feet in length, bulged out at the lower end into a bulb-like protuberance, which may have been, however, merely an accidental result of its state of keeping; and threw off, at an acute angle, two branches about a foot from the top. It was covered with a bark of brittle coal, which is, however, wanting in all the fragments that have been preserved; and was resolved internally into a brown calcareous substance of about the hardness ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... to forecast the probable sequence of action. Since Spurling had lain down, he had altered his position, so that now his body stretched across the entrance, with his head in the corner where the two walls met, forming an acute angle with the threshold so that, though he prevented the door from opening more than two or three inches, directly it was opened his person would be visible, and exposed ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... there are windows, at a great height, of trefoil form. The shape of the tower itself is very unlike any I had before seen, and seemed to me extremely curious; it is five-sided, each side presenting an acute angle, and one being flattened at about a quarter of the height by a two-sided projection, which is not a tower but probably a recess within from whence to send arrows; yet there are no openings now visible; nor is there, on any side, a means of entrance, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... turns to the east and pursues a course not quite parallel to the trend of the range, but crosses the axis slowly in a direction a little south of east. Thus there is a triangular tract between the river and the axis of the mountain, with its acute angle extending eastward. I climb the mountain overlooking this country. To the east the peaks are not very high, and already most of the snow has melted, but little patches lie here and there under the lee of ledges of rock. To the west the peaks grow ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... at the commencement of the campaign. We tried to unite them, with the evident intention of giving battle and checking the enemy's advance, and by this effort to unite them while avoiding battle with a much stronger enemy, and necessarily withdrawing the armies at an acute angle—we led the French on to Smolensk. But we withdrew at an acute angle not only because the French advanced between our two armies; the angle became still more acute and we withdrew still farther, because Barclay de Tolly was an unpopular foreigner disliked by Bagration (who ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... sea in a straight line, but as it passes along the coast the progress of the line nearest the shore is retarded while the centre part continues at the same velocity, so that on plan the wave assumes a convex shape and the branch waves reaching the shore form an acute angle with the ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... galleons, frigates, brigantines, according to their naval discipline, placed themselves in the order and figure of an Y (upsilon), the letter of Pythagoras, as cranes do in their flight, and like an acute angle, in whose cone and basis the Thalamege placed herself ready to fight smartly. Friar John with the grenadiers got ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... acute-angled triangle, with two large pieces bitten out of it near the base, one bite having been taken out of the north side, while the other and larger had removed the south-west angle and formed the bay in which lay the wreck. The acute angle pointed toward the east, and the sides of the triangle were much twisted and broken. The mountain, upon the summit of which we stood, occupied the middle of the eastern half of the island, and proved to be, as we had anticipated, the crater of an apparently ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... broke into a sweet chime of delighted laughter when the judge seized the airy bit of lace as if it had been the heaviest and hottest of crowbars. She laughed again when she looked at his face. He had an odd trick of lifting one of his eyebrows very high and at an acute angle when perplexed or ill at ease. This eccentric left eyebrow—now quite wedge-shaped—had gone up almost to the edge of his tousled gray hair. Ruth patted his great clumsy hands with her little ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... way, with the nose of Delia's horse now level with my stirrup: for I guess'd that my dress had already betrayed us. And this was the case; for at the next glance I saw five or six dragoons detach themselves from the main body, and gallop in a direction at an acute angle to ours. On they came, yelling to us to halt, and scattering over the moor ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... square, or with right-angled corners, such as we were used to. They all seemed to be a combination or multiplication of a single design, which was nothing more than a massive triangular wall, with its right angle on the ground and its acute angle at the top. Sometimes two were built together, with their perpendicular surfaces joining; again, four were joined in the same manner, and one very large one was composed of twelve of these, radiating from a common centre, ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... leaders would be able to push their way farther westward, even beyond Amiens. But as the wedge deepened it would gradually draw down to a point so that the ultimate situation would be that the German lines would form an acute angle, the vortex of which would be on the Somme at or west of Amiens, one side passing through Albert, or possibly through the village of Bucquoy, the other through Montdidier. Such a formation would mean positive disaster. It would be worth a quarter of ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... his body resting upon the bar and a cigar stuck at an acute angle from the corner of his mouth, stood a tall, strong, heavily built man who could be none other than the famous McGinty himself. He was a black-maned giant, bearded to the cheek-bones, and with a shock of raven hair which fell to his collar. His complexion was ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... was dressed in a cinnamon-coloured coat with 'puffs' and a plush collar, a striped waistcoat with mother-of-pearl buttons, green trousers with straps of varnished leather, and white chamois leather gloves), when this lover pressed both fists to his bosom, and poking his two elbows out at an acute angle, howled like a dog, Maria Nikolaevna could ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... instant they caught a fleeting glimpse of Lenox Avenue, which runs parallel with Fifth, and then they were bowling along St. Nicholas Avenue. After a half-mile or less, they crossed Eighth Avenue at an acute angle, but the gray car kept steadily on, and soon was skirting ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... General Sickles's corps had taken a position in advance of the rest of the line, upon a ridge branching off from Cemetery Ridge at an acute angle. Here he was fiercely attacked and most of his force finally driven back into the line of Cemetery Ridge. The Union right had been greatly weakened to strengthen the centre. The Confederates charged here also, and carried the outer intrenchments at Culp's Hill. The Union ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... slippery place. The pony followed with admirable caution, and my brother trudged in the rear and took his cue from us. After five minutes of this the ground grew easier and at the same time steeper, and I guessed that we were slanting up the hillside and away from the torrent at an acute angle. The many twists and angles, and the utter darkness (for we were now moving between trees) had completely baffled my reckoning when—at the end of twenty minutes, perhaps—Mr. Mackenzie halted and allowed me ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... waves beyond that line of white frothing breakers washed the shores of the Mother's beloved green island, Emerald Airinn, set in silver foam. A few miles, St. George's Channel spanned—then straight as the crow flies over Wicklow, Queen's County, King's County, taking Galway at the acute angle of the wild mallard's flight; and there would be the chained lakes and winding silver rivers, the grey-green mountains and the beetling cliffs, the dreamy valleys and wild glens of Connemara, with the ancient towers of Castleclare rising ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... which had made it beautiful, and the iron-grey hairs of Finn's dense, hard coat had taken on the character of dry bristles, while his haunch-bones were two outstanding peaks, from which his back fell away at an acute angle to the root of his tail, where once a level pad of flesh had been. Now the tail seemed to sprout from a kind of well in his body, and a bird might have nested in the hollow between his shoulder-blades, which once had been flat as the top of a table. His back, too, which had been broad and ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... ties burned, and the rails bent and twisted by heating them over the burning ties. It was found, however, that Burnside's corps could not cross at Ox Ford. Lee had taken a position with his centre on the river at this point, with the two wings thrown back, his line making an acute angle ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... the girl to Willard. The Easterner was examining a small pistol that he had drawn from a yellow holster at his waist, so high on his waist that he had been compelled to bend his elbow in an acute angle to get it out. His hands were trembling, whether from the wetting he had received or from doubt as to the rider's intentions, was a question that the rider did not bother with. He looked again at the girl. Doubt had come into her eyes; she was looking half fearfully at him, and he saw ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... came to a tragical end in a different way. I found his body dangling among the bushes on a bank. Two small but tough grapevine twigs growing out horizontally and close together formed a very acute angle, and this was the trap in which the innocent bird was caught. In some way one of his legs had slipped between the branches, the angle of which became more acute, of course, toward the apex. Thus the more he struggled the more tightly his tarsus ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... attain a higher level. The branches resemble rivers more frequently than the main channels; for they generally commence as very fine grooves, and, becoming broader and broader, join them at an acute angle. An attempt again has been made to compare the lunar clefts with those vast gorges, the marvellous results of aqueous action, called canyons, which attain their greatest dimensions in North America; such as the Great Canyon of the Colorado, which is at least 300 miles in length, and ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... yards distant, a strong ripple in the river like the letter V, and it immediately struck me that an elk had come down the river from the jungle and was swimming down the stream. This was soon proved to be the case, as I saw the head of a doe elk in the acute angle ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... Williams Creek. Mild night, not so like rain this morning. Bearing of 355 degrees crossing this creek at an acute angle, crossed this creek again at three miles, crossed again at five miles—creek close on the right; at six and one-eighth miles crossed a deep tributary at its junction—heavy timber, plenty of water. Williams Creek still close on the right full of spinifex on the ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay

... were sent me by Dr. Hooker. This species differs from the last in the stems and leaves being thicker or coarser; their divisions form a more acute angle with one another; the notches on the leaves bear three or four short bristles instead of one; and the bladders are twice as large, or about 1/5 of an inch (5.08 mm.) in diameter. In all essential respects the bladders ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... bit of leathern gear in which his left foot might appear in polite society to advantage. Possibly Thaddeus might have endured the pain of a right boot on a left foot, had not Norah unfortunately chosen for that member a box-toed boot, while for the right she had selected one with a very decided acute angle at ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs

... underneath, and satin-like in sleekness all over. Their form is very dainty, the little legs being no thicker than a man's finger, the neck long and the head ornamented with little pointed horns and broad round ears. The nets are tied on to trees in two long lines, which converge to an acute angle, the bottom part of the net lying on the ground. Then a party of men and women accompanied by their trained dogs, which have bells hung round their necks, beat the surrounding bushes, and the frightened small game rush into ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... have done Ralph too much honour to have pointed with his hand. Besides, it was a way that Andrew had at all times. He indicated persons and things with that part of him which was most convenient at the time. He would point with his elbow stuck sideways at an acute angle in a manner that was distinctly libellous. He would do it menacingly with his head, and the indication contemptuous of his left knee was a triumph. But the finest and most conclusive use of all was his great toe as an index-finger ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... adorned with heavy architectural ornaments. They joined each other at right angles; and a half circular tower, which contained the entrance and the staircase, occupied the point of junction, and rounded the acute angle. One of other two sides of the little court, in which there was just sufficient room to turn a carriage, was occupied by some low buildings answering the purpose of offices; the other, by a parapet surrounded ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... angle bridle joint," used in similar positions to the above, but when the two pieces meet at an acute angle at ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham

... entrance opened from the heading into the air-way at an acute angle. He thought the boy might have turned into that, and he passed up through it and so into the chambers. He stopped at times to call Ralph's name, but no answer ever came. He wandered back, finally, toward the fall, and down into the heading where the burned coat was. After a few moments ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... consequence of the sands and the rapidity of the water which rose three inches last night. Behind another island come in from the south two creeks, called Eau, Beau, or Clear Water creeks; on the north is a very remarkable bend, where the high lands approach the river, and form an acute angle at the head of a large island produced by a narrow channel through the point of the bend. We passed several other islands, and encamped at seven and a half miles on ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... Indeed, it is mentioned, not because of its importance, but to point out that it is in no way connected with the kidneys, as patients are sometimes led to believe. It is a direct and natural result of pregnancy. Since the womb enlarges and tilts forward at a more acute angle than formerly, it presses against the bladder, giving the same sensation as when the ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... line a connection between the horizontal and vertical; the right angle as a connection between the obtuse angle (largest) and the acute angle (smallest); in size of parts the half cube standing between ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin



Words linked to "Acute angle" :   oblique angle



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