osculating circle

1. 1.

   the circle that touches a curve (on the concave side) and whose radius is the radius of curvature

   Synonymscircle of curvature

   Broadercircle

Questions about osculating circle

What does osculating circle mean?

osculating circle means "the circle that touches a curve (on the concave side) and whose radius is the radius of curvature".

What is another word for osculating circle?

Close synonyms include circle of curvature. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is osculating circle a common word?

osculating circle is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.