Word.ws English Dictionary

P-wave

P-wave noun: a longitudinal compressional wave produced by an earthquake.

Noun

P-wave (plural P-waves)

  1. A longitudinal compressional wave produced by an earthquake.
    • P-waves are the first to arrive; that is, they travel fastest. These are ‘push-pull’ waves analogous to sound waves, in which each particle moves back and forth as the waves propagate.2004, Richard Fortey, The Earth, Folio Society, published 2011, page 71
    Synonyms:
    seismic wave

Synonyms of P-wave

Forms of P-wave

pluralP-waves
alternative formP wave

Origin of P-wave

From p(rimary) + wave.

Questions about P-wave

What does P-wave mean?
P-wave means a longitudinal compressional wave produced by an earthquake.
What part of speech is P-wave?
P-wave is a noun.
What is the plural of P-wave?
The plural of P-wave is P-waves.

Words near P-wave in the dictionary

  1. P-town
  2. p-type
  3. P-U
  4. p-value
  5. p-values
  6. P-wave
  7. P-waves
  8. p-way
  9. p-word
  10. p-words
  11. p-zombie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: P-wave (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “P-wave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/p-wave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.