Word.ws English Dictionary

periapsises

periapsises is the plural of periapsis.

Meaning of periapsis

Noun

periapsis (plural periapsides or periapsises or periapses)

  1. The point of a body's (elliptical) orbit in a 2-body gravitational system such that the distance between the two bodies (measured from their respective centres of mass) is at its minimum.
    • Figure 5-19. Sun-Venus-Orbiter geometry illustrates how the periapsis moves around the planet during the Venusian sidereal year to sample day and night hemispheres. Because the planet rotates in a retrograde direction, it takes more than one Venusian sidereal year for periapsis to move over all...1983, Richard O. Fimmel, Laurence Colin, Eric Burgess, Pioneer Venus, NASA SP-461, page 109
  2. The minimum distance between the two bodies in such a system.

Questions about periapsises

What is periapsises the plural of?
Periapsises is the plural of periapsis.

Words near periapsises in the dictionary

  1. periappendicular
  2. periapse
  3. periapses
  4. periapsides
  5. periapsis
  6. periapsises
  7. periapt
  8. periapts
  9. periaquaductal
  10. periaquatic
  11. periaqueduct

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: periapsises (page history and authors); periapsis (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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