evolutions

Noun

evolution (countable and uncountable, plural evolutions)

1. A manoeuvre of troops or ships.
   • Mean while, he never failed to be present, when any regiment, or corps of men, were drawn out to be exercised and reviewed, and accompanied them in all their evolutions […].1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC
2. A turning movement, especially of the body.
   • Our necromancer […] taking up his wand, waved it around his head in a very mysterious motion, with a view of intimidating these forward visitants, who, far from being awed by this sort of evolution, became more and more obstreperous […].1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC
3. (obsolete) A turned or twisted shape; an involution, a complex or intricate shape.
   • ‘It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crouded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists.’1791, James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, Oxford, published 2008, page 298
4. (archaic) The act or process of unfolding or opening out; the progression of events in regular succession.
   • The world […] might have been gradually produced from very small beginnings […] rather than by a sudden evolution of the whole by the Almighty fiat.1794–1796, Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], →OCLC
5. The opening out of a curve; now more generally, the gradual transformation of a curve by a change of the conditions generating it.
6. (historical) The extraction of a root from a given power.

See all 10 meanings of evolution