Word.ws English Dictionary

pycnophylactic

pycnophylactic adjective: relating to a kind of areal interpolation that preserves density within defined regions.

Adjective

pycnophylactic (not comparable)

  1. Relating to a kind of areal interpolation that preserves density within defined regions.
    • If intrazonal homogeneity cannot be maintained in cases where similar land uses lie in adjacent zones and dissimilar land uses lie within the same zone, then the pycnophylactic method may be favored.1988, Peter Stanley Lindquist, Traffic Zones Reconsidered, page 66
    • Although the pycnophylactic method is arguably more appropriate for isopleth mapping than point-based interpolation methods, it must be emphasized that the method should only be used with continuous phenomenon.2005, Terry A. Slocum, Robert B. McMaster, Fritz C. Kessler, Thematic Cartography and Geographic Visualization, page 286

Origin of pycnophylactic

From pycno- + phylactic. Coined by Waldo Tobler in his 1979 paper "Smooth Pycnophylactic Interpolation for Geographical Regions", Journal of the American Statistical Association, volume 74, number 367, pages 519-536.

Questions about pycnophylactic

What does pycnophylactic mean?
Pycnophylactic means relating to a kind of areal interpolation that preserves density within defined regions.
What part of speech is pycnophylactic?
Pycnophylactic is an adjective.

Words near pycnophylactic in the dictionary

  1. pycnonotid
  2. pycnonotids
  3. pycnonuclear
  4. pycnophyid
  5. pycnophyids
  6. pycnophylactic
  7. pycnopodioside
  8. pycnoses
  9. pycnosis
  10. pycnosome
  11. pycnosomes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pycnophylactic (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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