flexure

English

Etymology

From Latin flexura.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈflɛkʃə(ɹ)/, /ˈflɛksjʊə(ɹ)/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Noun

flexure (countable and uncountable, plural flexures)

1. The act of bending or flexing; flexion.
2. A turn; a bend; a fold; a curve.
   • 1843, Bernard M— (of S—), A Dream of a Queen's Reign, page 4:

     but scarce had I drawn back mine arms, strained the outward flexure of my knee-joints, and was fixed in an apt disposure to take the corvetto primo and leap-valiant of the cour, when methought suddenly there came in and did appear before me mine ancient, most reverend and singular good friend, the rector of Saynt Andrew of S—, nearest in neighbourhood, but not of mine own cure, myself being of D— manor house in the same vicinage,—who astonished beyond measure at my so extasied gladness, demanded wherefore I did carry myself on this wise?

   • 1860, “Glaciers”, in British Quarterly Review:

     varying with the flexures of the valley through which it meandered

3. (engineering) A part of a machine designed to bend in operation.
4. (anatomy) A curve or bend in a tubular organ.
   • 1681, Nehemiah Grew, “The Comparative Anatomy of Stomachs and Guts Begun. Being Several Lectures Read before the Royal Society in the Year, 1676. Chapter I. Of the Stomachs and Guts of Six Carnivorous Quadrupeds; sc. The Weesle, Fitchet, Polecat, Cat, Dog and Fox.”, in Musæum Regalis Societatis. Or A Catalogue & Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities Belonging to the Royal Society and Preserved at Gresham Colledge. […], London: […] W. Rawlins, for the author, →OCLC, page 1:

     The Stomach [of a weasel] about three inches long; proportionably, more than a Dogs. An inch in Diametre at the upper Orifice; and the nether, ¼; having a flexure towards its Conjunction with the Guts: ſhaped like to the body of a pair of Bag-Pipes.

5. (zoology) The last joint, or bend, of the wing of a bird.
6. (astronomy) The small distortion of an astronomical instrument caused by the weight of its parts; the amount to be added or subtracted from the observed readings of the instrument to correct them for this distortion.

Derived terms

• hepatic flexure
• sigmoid flexure
• splenic flexure

 

Related terms

• flex
• flexural
• flexion

Translations

curve or bend in a tubular organ

• Finnish: mutka (fi)
• Hungarian: görbület (hu), hajlat (hu)

Verb

flexure (third-person singular simple present flexures, present participle flexuring, simple past and past participle flexured)

1. To introduce a flexure into; to bend or flex.

References

• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (2000).

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “flexure”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

French

Noun

flexure f (plural flexures)

1. (geology) flexure

Further reading

• “flexure”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Latin

Participle

flexūre

1. vocative masculine singular of flexūrus