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Anomaly   /ənˈɑməli/   Listen
noun
Anomaly  n.  (pl. anomalies)  
1.
Deviation from the common rule; an irregularity; anything anomalous. "We are enabled to unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contending principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men." "As Professor Owen has remarked, there is no greater anomaly in nature than a bird that can not fly."
2.
(Astron.)
(a)
The angular distance of a planet from its perihelion, as seen from the sun. This is the true anomaly. The eccentric anomaly is a corresponding angle at the center of the elliptic orbit of the planet. The mean anomaly is what the anomaly would be if the planet's angular motion were uniform.
(b)
The angle measuring apparent irregularities in the motion of a planet.
3.
(Nat. Hist.) Any deviation from the essential characteristics of a specific type.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Anomaly" Quotes from Famous Books



... elegant mansion, to and from which he journeyed daily, and invariably by third class. It happened that one of the clerks in his employ lived in a cottage accessible by the same line of railway, but he always travelled first class; the same train thus presenting the anomaly of the master being in that place which one would naturally assign to the man, and the man appearing to usurp the position of the master. One day these two alighted at the terminus in full view of each other. "Well," said Mr. B—, in that tone of banter which a superior so frequently ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... foreign relations, an authority, independent for a certain term of years of the legislative assembly, which has no accounts to render to it and which cannot be questioned or constitutionally overthrown, that authority is so strange, and, if the phrase may pass, so monstrous an anomaly, that it dares not exercise its power, and dreads the scandal which it would raise by acting on its rights, and seems as it were paralysed with terror at the very thought ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... the poorer sections of our own nobility—though confessedly the most splendid in Europe; a fact which, since the period of my infancy, I have had many personal opportunities for verifying both in England and in Ireland. From this peculiar anomaly, affecting the domestic economy of English merchants, there arises a disturbance upon the usual scale for measuring the relations of rank. The equation, so to speak, between rank and the ordinary expressions of rank, which usually runs parallel to the graduations ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... to make detours to avoid towns and villages favorable to King Philip. Why one town or village should take one side, and the next the other, was inexplicable to Jack, but it was so, and throughout the country this singular anomaly existed. It could be accounted for by a variety of causes. A popular mayor or a powerful landed proprietor, whose sympathies were strong with one side or the other, would probably be followed by the townspeople or peasants. The influence of the priests, ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... government is a complicated machine. We have twenty-six states, with governments administered by separate legislatures and executive chiefs, and represented by equal numbers in the general Senate of the nation. This organization is an anomaly in the history of the world. It is that which distinguishes us from all other nations, ancient and modern: from the simple monarchies and republics of Europe, and from the confederacies which have figured in any age upon the face of the globe. ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy


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