plane-polarized
|plane-po-la-rized|
🇺🇸
/ˈpleɪnˌpoʊləraɪzd/
🇬🇧
/ˈpleɪnˌpəʊləraɪzd/
(plane-polarize)
restricted to a single plane
Etymology
'plane-polarized' originates from the English words 'plane' and 'polarize'. 'Plane' ultimately comes from Latin 'planus' meaning 'flat', and 'polarize' is formed from 'polar' plus the verb-forming suffix '-ize'.
'polarize' developed in modern scientific English in the 19th century from Latin 'polaris' (from Greek 'pólos' meaning 'axis'); 'plane' entered English from Old French and Latin 'planus'. The compound 'plane-polarized' is a descriptive formation in optics from combining these elements in modern English.
Initially the components referred separately to 'flat' (plane) and to 'having poles or an axis' (polar); combined in 19th-20th century optics they came to mean 'restricted to a single plane of vibration', and this technical meaning has remained stable.
Meanings by Part of Speech
Verb 1
past participle or past-tense form meaning 'to cause (light or a beam) to vibrate in a single plane; to polarize into a plane.'
They plane-polarized the beam before it entered the sample.
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Antonyms
Adjective 1
describing light (or another transverse wave) whose vibrations are confined to a single plane; linearly polarized.
The experiment used plane-polarized light to detect small differences in refractive index.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Last updated: 2026/01/21 22:37