| Undulate | a. [ L. undulatus undulated, wavy, a dim. from unda a wave; cf. AS. &unr_;&unr_;, Icel. unnr; perhaps akin to E. water. Cf. Abound, Inundate, Redound, Surround. ] Same as Undulated. [ 1913 Webster ] |
| Undulate | v. t. [ imp. & p. p. Undulated p. pr. & vb. n. Undulating. ] To cause to move backward and forward, or up and down, in undulations or waves; to cause to vibrate. [ 1913 Webster ] Breath vocalized, that is, vibrated and undulated. Holder. [ 1913 Webster ] |
| Undulated | a. 1. Resembling, or in the nature of, waves; having a wavy surface; undulatory. [ 1913 Webster ] 2. (Bot.) Waved obtusely up and down, near the margin, as a leaf or corolla; wavy. [ 1913 Webster ] 3. (Zool.) Formed with elevations and depressions resembling waves; having wavelike color markings; as, an undulated shell. [ 1913 Webster ] |
| Undulation | n. [ Cf. F. ondulation. ] 1. The act of undulating; a waving motion or vibration; as, the undulations of a fluid, of water, or of air; the undulations of sound. [ 1913 Webster ] 2. A wavy appearance or outline; waviness. Evelyn. [ 1913 Webster ] 3. (Mus.) (a) The tremulous tone produced by a peculiar pressure of the finger on a string, as of a violin. (b) The pulsation caused by the vibrating together of two tones not quite in unison; -- called also beat. [ 1913 Webster ] 4. (Physics) A motion to and fro, up and down, or from side to side, in any fluid or elastic medium, propagated continuously among its particles, but with no translation of the particles themselves in the direction of the propagation of the wave; a wave motion; a vibration. [ 1913 Webster ] |
| Undulatory | a. [ Cf. F. ondulatoire. ] Moving in the manner of undulations, or waves; resembling the motion of waves, which successively rise or swell rise or swell and fall; pertaining to a propagated alternating motion, similar to that of waves. [ 1913 Webster ]
Undulatory theory, or
Wave theory (of light) (Opt.), that theory which regards the various phenomena of light as due to undulations in an ethereal medium, propagated from the radiant with immense, but measurable, velocities, and producing different impressions on the retina according to their amplitude and frequency, the sensation of brightness depending on the former, that of color on the latter. The undulations are supposed to take place, not in the direction of propagation, as in the air waves constituting sound, but transversely, and the various phenomena of refraction, polarization, interference, etc., are attributable to the different affections of these undulations in different circumstances of propagation. It is computed that the frequency of the undulations corresponding to the several colors of the spectrum ranges from 458 millions of millions per second for the extreme red ray, to 727 millions of millions for the extreme violet, and their lengths for the same colors, from the thirty-eight thousandth to the sixty thousandth part of an inch. The theory of ethereal undulations is applicable not only to the phenomena of light, but also to those of heat. [ 1913 Webster ]
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