splines

Noun

spline (plural splines)

1. A long, thin piece of metal or wood.
2. A strip of wood or other material inserted into grooves in each of two pieces of wood to provide additional surface for gluing.
3. A flexible strip of metal or other material, that may be bent into a curve and used in a similar manner to a ruler to draw smooth curves between points.
4. Any of a number of smooth curves used to join points.
   • However, it should be possible to give more sophisticated spherical spline curves based on the de Castaljau method that are computed using multiple slerps between pairs of points and which work well for arbitrary knot positions (indeed, knot insertion methods for spline curves should suffice for...2001 April, Samuel R. Buss, Jay P Fillmore, “Spherical averages and applications to spherical splines and interpolation”, in ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), volume 20, number 2
5. A ridge or tooth on a drive shaft that meshes with a corresponding groove in a mating piece and transfers torque to it, maintaining the angular correspondence between the pieces; either the ridge or the groove, as part of a set of both (splines); the whole set of ridges and grooves.
6. A rectangular piece that fits grooves like key seats in a hub and a shaft, so that while the one may slide endwise on the other, both must revolve together.
   • Near-synonym: feather

   Synonyms:

   feather

See all 9 meanings of spline