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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

involution en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • (Southern-England) audio
  • /ɪnvəˈluːʃən/

Etymology

From Latin involūtiō, from involvō.

Meanings

  1. (countable, uncountable) Entanglement; a spiralling inwards; intricacy.
    • ‘Gomez,’ said the mortician, ‘is an expert only on the involutions of his own rectum.’ 1968, Anthony Burgess, “Enderby Outside”, in The Complete Enderby, published 2002, page 302:
    • […]usually his attention was diverted from her feet by her shrieks of laughter and the astounding involutions of her huge brown-yellow frame. 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter V, in Capricornia, page 74:
  2. (countable, uncountable) A complicated grammatical construction.
    • 1917, James Huneker, Unicorns, New York: Scribner, Chapter 11 “Style and Rhythm in English Prose,” p. 129, Walter Pater’s essay on Style is honeycombed with involutions and preciosity.
  3. (countable, uncountable) An endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse.
    • Involutions have the property that they are their own inverses. 1996, Alfred J. Menezesm, Paul C. van Oorschot, Scott A. Vanstone, Handbook of Applied Cryptography, CRC Press, page 10:
  4. (countable, uncountable) The shrinking of an organ (such as the uterus) to a former size.
  5. (countable, uncountable) The regressive changes in the body occurring with old age.
  6. (countable, obsolete, uncountable) A power: the result of raising one number to the power of another.
  7. (countable, of a society or nation, uncountable) A cessation of development or progress involving intense inner competition.
  8. (countable, neologism, uncountable) A state of increased competition for limited resources, requiring great effort to stay ahead.
  9. (countable, uncountable) The migration of a cell layer inward, sliding over an outer layer of cells. It occurs at gastrulation during embryogenesis.

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
involutions Number=Plur lexicographic

Coordinates

aging · ageing

Deriveds

self-involution · subinvolution · involution algebra

Hyponyms

complementation · complex conjugation

Relateds

involutionary · dual · involve · selfdual · involutional

Translations (24)

fr involution (mathematics; an endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse) · fr involution (shrinking of an organ to a former size) · fi involuutio (mathematics; an endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse) · it involuzione (mathematics; an endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse) · bg дегенерация (regressive changes in the body occurring with old age) · de Einrollen (entanglement; a spiralling inwards) · zh 內卷 /内卷 (a cessation of development or progress despite intense inner competition) · zh 退化 (shrinking of an organ to a former size) · oc involucion (mathematics; an endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse) · es involución (a cessation of development or progress despite intense inner competition) · bg объркване (entanglement; a spiralling inwards) · sv involution (mathematics; an endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse) · de Involution (shrinking of an organ to a former size) · zh 對合 /对合 (mathematics; an endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse) · es involución (regressive changes in the body occurring with old age) · de Involution (regressive changes in the body occurring with old age) · de Involution (mathematics; an endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse) · pl inwolucja (mathematics; an endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse) · is sjálfhverf vörpun (mathematics; an endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse) · zh 內卷 /内卷 (a state of increased competition for limited resources, requiring great effort to stay ahead) · is sjálfhverfa (mathematics; an endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse) · ja 対合 (mathematics; an endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse) · zh 內卷 /内卷 (entanglement; a spiralling inwards) · de Rückbildung (shrinking of an organ to a former size)

wikidata: Q1888840 · wikidata: Q116045021 · wikidata: Q846862