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tesseract (TES-uh-rakt) - n., the four-dimensional analogue of a cube, a hypercube.
A regular four-dimensional solid comprising 8 cubes set 3 to an edge, having 16 vertices, 32 edges, 24 squares. One of the six regular convex polychoron (the four-dimensional analogue of a polyhedron and a polygon). The word was coined in 1888 by Charles Howard Hinton in his book A New Era of Thought, a collection of essays on the fourth dimension, from Greek roots tessera, neuter plural of tesseres, four + aktīs, ray of light, presumably thinking of this projection of the shape -- though of course, there are even ways to project a tesseract into two dimensions than to project a cube into them: Wikipedia has several.
---L.
A regular four-dimensional solid comprising 8 cubes set 3 to an edge, having 16 vertices, 32 edges, 24 squares. One of the six regular convex polychoron (the four-dimensional analogue of a polyhedron and a polygon). The word was coined in 1888 by Charles Howard Hinton in his book A New Era of Thought, a collection of essays on the fourth dimension, from Greek roots tessera, neuter plural of tesseres, four + aktīs, ray of light, presumably thinking of this projection of the shape -- though of course, there are even ways to project a tesseract into two dimensions than to project a cube into them: Wikipedia has several.
---L.
