spherical
adjective
spher·i·cal
ˈsfir-i-kəl 
ˈsfer-
1
: having the form of a sphere or of one of its segments
2
: relating to or dealing with a sphere or its properties
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Something spherical is like a sphere in being round, or more or less round, in three dimensions. Apples and oranges are both spherical, for example, even though they're never perfectly round. A spheroid has a roughly spherical shape; so an asteroid, for instance, is often spheroidal—fairly round, but lumpy.
Examples of spherical in a Sentence
the planet Earth is not, in fact, perfectly spherical
Recent Examples on the Web
The team also highlighted that the spherical, dodecahedral and tensegrity architectures harvest six-degree-of-freedom motion, eliminating orientational blind spots.
—
Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Interesting Engineering, 28 Aug. 2025
Regardless of their shape or place of origin, a few of these could comfortably fit into the palm of your hand, like Monopoly board tokens, and were sometimes stored in spherical clay envelopes impressed with markings on the outside to reflect their contents.
—Literary Hub, 26 Aug. 2025
In simple terms, every world map model reflects the constraint that in converting a spherical Earth to a flat chart, there would be trade-offs.
—Bright Simons, semafor.com, 25 Aug. 2025
To that end, BALLS imagines a reality where the kindly Professor NPC who offers you a choice of three starter monsters is actually the one who created both the technology and normalized culture of trapping living things in spherical prisons.
—Josh Weiss, Forbes.com, 15 Aug. 2025
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Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Interesting Engineering, 28 Aug. 2025
Regardless of their shape or place of origin, a few of these could comfortably fit into the palm of your hand, like Monopoly board tokens, and were sometimes stored in spherical clay envelopes impressed with markings on the outside to reflect their contents.
—Literary Hub, 26 Aug. 2025
In simple terms, every world map model reflects the constraint that in converting a spherical Earth to a flat chart, there would be trade-offs.
—Bright Simons, semafor.com, 25 Aug. 2025
To that end, BALLS imagines a reality where the kindly Professor NPC who offers you a choice of three starter monsters is actually the one who created both the technology and normalized culture of trapping living things in spherical prisons.
—Josh Weiss, Forbes.com, 15 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for spherical
Cite this Entry
“Spherical.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spherical. Accessed 9 Sep. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
spherical
adjective
spher·i·cal
ˈsfir-i-kəl
ˈsfer-
: relating to or having the form of a sphere or part of a sphere
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