wavelet
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Calque of French ondelette, from onde (“wave”) + -ette (“-let”).
Pronunciation[edit]
Audio (US) (file)
Noun[edit]
wavelet (plural wavelets)
- A small wave; a ripple.
- 1851, “Speaker’s Meaning dimly descried” (Fragment) in Poems, London: William Pickering, p. 110,[1]
- I know not whether
- I see your meaning: if I do, it lies
- Upon the wordy wavelets of your voice,
- Dim as an evening shadow in a brook,
- When the least moon has silver on’t no larger
- Than the pure white of Hebe’s nail.
- 1856, Herman Melville, “The Piazza” in The Piazza Tales, New York: Dix & Edwards, pp. 6-7,[2]
- […] long ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and little wavelets of grass ripple over upon the low piazza, as their beach, and the blown down of dandelions is wafted like the spray […]
- 1880, Sabine Baring-Gould, chapter 4, in Mehalah: A Story of the Salt Marshes[3], London: Smith, Elder & Co., published 1884, page 46:
- The water danced and sparkled, multitudes of birds were on the wing, now dipping in the wavelets, now rising and shaking off the glittering drops.
- 1963, Sylvia Plath, chapter 13, in The Bell Jar, London: Faber & Faber, published 1971:
- A little, rubbishy wavelet, full of candy wrappers and orange peel and seaweed, folded over my foot.
- 1965, Muriel Spark, chapter 3, in The Mandelbaum Gate, London: Macmillan:
- They left the shop in a united wavelet of amusement […]
- 1851, “Speaker’s Meaning dimly descried” (Fragment) in Poems, London: William Pickering, p. 110,[1]
- (mathematics) A fast-decaying oscillation.
Derived terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
a small wave; a ripple