"polar line" - Word of the Day from the OED

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polar line, n.

DRAFT ENTRY June 2009

Brit. /pl ln/, U.S. /polr lan/  [< POLAR adj. + LINE n.² With sense 3 compare slightly earlier POLAR n. 2.] 

    1 Either of the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. Obs.

1658 J. SPENCER Kaina kai Palaia 222 Leud debauched Ministers, whose doctrin and lives are as distant, as the two Polar Lines, cosmographically described on the Globe terrestriall.

    2. A line passing through a pole or related to a (geographic or magnetic) pole; esp. a line joining north and south magnetic poles. Also fig.

1703 Moxon's Mech. Dyalling (ed. 4) in Moxon's Mech. Exercises (new ed.) 328 Set off from the Meridian Line the Complement of the Poles Elevation,..and there draw another Line from the Center as AP, which we will call the Polar Line. a1711 T. KEN Wks. (1721) IV. 457 Should she 'scape that furious Strife, Yet passing thro' the Waves of Life She'd from her Polar Line T'wards Vanities decline. a1737 J. HUTCHINSON Glory or Gravity (1749) XI. 306 Will not more of these Corpuscles [of a lodestone] pass the Earth in a polar Line? 1777 Philos. Trans. 1776 (Royal Soc.) 66 592 It has acquired a considerable degree of magnetic force, by being placed in the polar line with the other part of this machine. 1851 Sci. Amer. 7 June 304/1 Sleeping transversely to the north and south polar line, for 20 years, has not cost one dollar for doctors' bills. 1900 K. PEARSON Gram. Sci. (ed. 2) vi. 208 Neither would the ‘equator’ corresponding to the polar line OZ serve our purpose. 1957 W. MOORE in B. Lepley Lang. of Value 11 Value language is descriptive of what appears at a node near the subject end of the same polar line.

    3. Geom. = POLAR n. 2.

1851 A. E. CHURCH Elements Analyt. Geom. II. 115 The polar line of the point O. 1922 Amer. Jrnl. Math. 44 262 The pencil of conics through the four points has a real common self-polar triangle with A..as a vertex and BC, the polar line of A with respect to the given conic, as a side. 1994 Amer. Math. Monthly 101 625 Facts in projective geometry concerning the polar line of a point.

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