Contextualizebeta

involution

noun
/ɪnvəˈluːʃən/

Etymology

From Latin involūtiō, from involvō.

  1. borrowed from involūtiō

Definitions

  1. Entanglement

    Entanglement; a spiralling inwards; intricacy.

    • […]usually his attention was diverted from her feet by her shrieks of laughter and the astounding involutions of her huge brown-yellow frame.
    • ‘Gomez,’ said the mortician, ‘is an expert only on the involutions of his own rectum.’

  2. A complicated grammatical construction.

    • 1917, James Huneker, Unicorns, New York: Scribner, Chapter 11 “Style and Rhythm in English Prose,” p. 129, Walter Pater’s essay on Style is honeycombed with involutions and preciosity.

  3. An endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function

    An endofunction whose square is equal to the identity function; a function equal to its inverse.

    • Involutions have the property that they are their own inverses.
  4. ›+ 6 more definitions

    1. The shrinking of an organ (such as the uterus) to a former size.

    2. The regressive changes in the body occurring with old age.

    3. A power

      A power: the result of raising one number to the power of another.

    4. A cessation of development or progress involving intense inner competition.

    5. A state of increased competition for limited resources, requiring great effort to stay…

      A state of increased competition for limited resources, requiring great effort to stay ahead.

    6. The migration of a cell layer inward, sliding over an outer layer of cells. It occurs at…

      The migration of a cell layer inward, sliding over an outer layer of cells. It occurs at gastrulation during embryogenesis.

The neighborhood

Derived

involution algebra, self-involution, subinvolution

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at involution. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01involution02intricacy03intricate04enmeshed05enmesh06complications07complication08complexity09entanglement

A definitional loop anchored at involution. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

9 hops · closes at involution

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA