Word.ws English Dictionary

spherical cow

spherical cow noun: a highly simplified scientific model of a complex real-life phenomenon.

spherical cow: a highly simplified scientific model of a complex real-life phenomenon
Image: Ingrid Kallick, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

spherical cow (plural spherical cows)

  1. (humorous) A highly simplified scientific model of a complex real-life phenomenon.
    • […] something of a "spherical cow" approximation of dark matter.Csaba Csaki (ed.), Scott Dodelson (ed.), Physics of the Large and the Small: TASI 09, Proceedings of the Theoretical Advanced Study Institute in Elementary Particle Physics (page 405)

Synonyms of spherical cow

Forms of spherical cow

pluralspherical cows

Questions about spherical cow

What does spherical cow mean?
Spherical cow means a highly simplified scientific model of a complex real-life phenomenon.
What part of speech is spherical cow?
Spherical cow is a noun.
What is the plural of spherical cow?
The plural of spherical cow is spherical cows.

Words near spherical cow in the dictionary

  1. spherical chicken
  2. spherical chickens
  3. spherical cone
  4. spherical cones
  5. spherical coordinates
  6. spherical cow
  7. spherical cows
  8. spherical curve
  9. spherical curves
  10. spherical excess
  11. spherical geometries

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spherical cow (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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Cite this entry: “spherical cow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spherical_cow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.