Word.ws English Dictionary

Foucault's pendulum

Foucault's pendulum noun: a pendulum on a long wire, free to move in any direction; the plane of its motion appears to turn (clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere) as the world turns beneath it.

foucault's pendulum: a pendulum on a long wire, free to move in any direction; the plane of its motion appears to turn...
Image: Nbrouard, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

Foucault's pendulum (plural Foucault's pendulums)

  1. A pendulum on a long wire, free to move in any direction; the plane of its motion appears to turn (clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere) as the world turns beneath it.

Forms of Foucault's pendulum

pluralFoucault's pendulums

Origin of Foucault's pendulum

From the name of the French physicist Jean Bernard Léon Foucault.

Questions about Foucault's pendulum

What does Foucault's pendulum mean?
Foucault's pendulum means a pendulum on a long wire, free to move in any direction; the plane of its motion appears to turn (clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere) as the world turns beneath it.
What part of speech is Foucault's pendulum?
Foucault's pendulum is a noun.
What is the plural of Foucault's pendulum?
The plural of Foucault's pendulum is Foucault's pendulums.

Words near Foucault's pendulum in the dictionary

  1. Foucault
  2. Foucault current
  3. Foucault currents
  4. Foucault pendulum
  5. Foucault pendulums
  6. Foucault's pendulum
  7. Foucaultian
  8. Foucaultianism
  9. Foucaultians
  10. Foucaults
  11. Fouch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Foucault's pendulum (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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