axis
Definitions
General English
General Science
- noun an imaginary line through the centre of a plant or animal
Aviation
- noun an imaginary line around which a body rotates
- noun a horizontal or vertical scale on a graph, often referred to as the X axis, the horizontal axis, and the Y axis, the vertical axis
Cars & Driving
- noun the centreline about which a body can or could rotate, or which divides a figure into two symmetrical parts
Computing
- noun a line around which something turns
- noun a reference line which is the basis for coordinates on a graph
Construction
- A straight line representing the center of symmetry of a plane or solid object.
Economics
- noun one of the vertical (y-axis) or horizontal (x-axis) lines which join at zero and against which a graph is plotted
Electronics
- In a coordinate system, one of a set of reference lines. Distances or angles may be measured from it.
- A straight line of symmetry that passes through a body or system.
Health Economics
- (written as Axis)A line on a graph along which the value of a variable is always zero. Graphs usually have two such lines, one for each of two variables, set at 90o to one another and intersecting at the point at which each variable has a value of zero.
Information & Library Science
- noun a fixed line against which other positions can be measured, e.g. the vertical and horizontal axes on a graph
Medical
- noun a central vessel which divides into other vessels
Military
- noun a real or imaginary line on the ground used to indicate the primary direction for a unit or sub-unit which is deployed in a tactical formation
Politics
- noun an association between several people, organisations, or countries that is regarded as a centre of power or influence
- noun (written as Axis)the military and political alliance of Germany, Italy, and, later, Japan that fought the Allies in World War II
Sports
- noun the second vertebra of the neck, below the atlas, connected to the skull
Origin & History of “axis”
Axis is at the centre of a complex web of ‘turning’ words. Besides its immediate source, Latin axis, there were Greek áxōn, Sanskrit ákshas, and a hypothetical Germanic *akhsō which produced Old English eax ‘axle’ as well as modern German achse ‘axle, shaft’ and Dutch as; and there could well be a connection with Latin agere (source of English act, agent, etc) in the sense ‘drive’. also related is an unrecorded Latin form *acslā, which produced āla ‘wing’ (source of English aileron and aisle); its diminutive was axilla ‘armpit’, from which English gets the adjective axillary (17th c.) and the botanical term axil (18th c.).
