Word.ws English Dictionary

hairy ball theorem

hairy ball theorem proper noun: a theorem stating that there is no nonvanishing continuous tangent vector field on the sphere; colloquially, that "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick".

hairy ball theorem: a theorem stating that there is no nonvanishing continuous tangent vector field on the sphere;...
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Proper noun

the hairy ball theorem

  1. A theorem stating that there is no nonvanishing continuous tangent vector field on the sphere; colloquially, that "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick".

Questions about hairy ball theorem

What does hairy ball theorem mean?
Hairy ball theorem means a theorem stating that there is no nonvanishing continuous tangent vector field on the sphere; colloquially, that "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick".
What part of speech is hairy ball theorem?
Hairy ball theorem is a proper noun.

Words near hairy ball theorem in the dictionary

  1. hairy
  2. hairy arm
  3. hairy armadillo
  4. hairy armadillos
  5. hairy arms
  6. hairy ball theorem
  7. hairy balls
  8. hairy banana
  9. hairy bananas
  10. hairy canaries
  11. hairy canary

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hairy ball theorem (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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