trisect
/trʌɪˈsɛkt
/verb [with object]
Divide (something) into three parts, typically three equal parts: two walls trisect the gallery...
- Nicomedes trisected any rectilinear angle by means of the conchoidal curves, of which he had handed down the origin, order, and properties, being himself the discoverer of their special characteristic.
- Today, even as traffic signals multiply and thick yellow lines bisect and trisect the roads, motorists, scooterists and non-conformists all line up together at painfully long red lights and plan strategy.
- The right of the two diagrams shows how this hyperbola can be used to trisect the angle AOB.
Derivatives
trisection
- He also discussed parabolas, angle trisection and magic squares.
- In extending from the Pythagorean numbers to the totally real Vietens, it is important to understand the constructions involving trisections.
- Three geometric construction problems from antiquity puzzled mathematicians for centuries: the trisection of an angle, squaring the circle, and duplicating the cube.
trisector
- Their centers thus lie on the trisectors of the angles adjacent to that line.
- If the angles of any triangle be trisected, the triangle, formed by the meets of pairs of trisectors, each pair being adjacent to the same side, is equilateral.
- We no longer look kindly on angle trisectors and circle squarers.
Origin
Late 17th century: from tri- 'three' + Latin sect- 'divided, cut' (from the verb secare).