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PRISM
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Optical device having a triangular shape and made of glass or quartz; used to deviate a beam or invert an image
Synonyms:
optical prism; prism
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("prism" is a kind of...):
optical device (a device for producing or controlling light)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "prism"):
erecting prism (a right-angled optical prism used to turn an inverted image upright)
Holonyms ("prism" is a part of...):
biprism (an optical device for obtaining interference fringes)
prism spectroscope; spectroscope (an optical instrument for spectrographic analysis)
scope; telescope (a magnifier of images of distant objects)
Derivation:
prismatic (exhibiting spectral colors formed by refraction of light through a prism)
prismatic (of or relating to or resembling or constituting a prism)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A polyhedron with two congruent and parallel faces (the bases) and whose lateral faces are parallelograms
Classified under:
Nouns denoting two and three dimensional shapes
Hypernyms ("prism" is a kind of...):
polyhedron (a solid figure bounded by plane polygons or faces)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "prism"):
parallelepiped; parallelepipedon; parallelopiped; parallelopipedon (a prism whose bases are parallelograms)
quadrangular prism (a prism whose bases are quadrangles)
triangular prism (a prism whose bases are triangles)
Derivation:
prismatic (of or relating to or resembling or constituting a prism)
