ACCELERATION

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does acceleration mean? 

• ACCELERATION (noun)
  The noun ACCELERATION has 3 senses:

1. an increase in rate of change

2. the act of accelerating; increasing the speed

3. (physics) a rate of increase of velocity

  Familiarity information: ACCELERATION used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ACCELERATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An increase in rate of change

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Context example:

modern science caused an acceleration of cultural change

Hypernyms ("acceleration" is a kind of...):

alteration; change; modification (an event that occurs when something passes from one state or phase to another)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "acceleration"):

getaway; pickup (the attribute of being capable of rapid acceleration)

precipitation (an unexpected acceleration or hastening)

Antonym:

deceleration (a decrease in rate of change)

Derivation:

accelerate (cause to move faster)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The act of accelerating; increasing the speed

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

acceleration; quickening; speedup

Hypernyms ("acceleration" is a kind of...):

hurrying; speed; speeding (changing location rapidly)

Antonym:

deceleration (the act of decelerating; decreasing the speed)

Derivation:

accelerate (cause to move faster)

Sense 3

Meaning:

(physics) a rate of increase of velocity

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Hypernyms ("acceleration" is a kind of...):

rate (a magnitude or frequency relative to a time unit)

Domain category:

natural philosophy; physics (the science of matter and energy and their interactions)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "acceleration"):

angular acceleration ((physics) the rate of change of the angular velocity of a rotating body)

centripetal acceleration (the acceleration toward the center that holds a satellite in elliptical orbit)

Antonym:

deceleration ((physics) a rate of decrease in velocity)

 Context examples 

To be called an acceleration, the peak must be greater than or equal to 15 bpm, and the acceleration must last greater than or equal to 15 seconds from the onset to return to baseline.

(Fetal Heart Rate Acceleration, NCI Thesaurus)

Fluctuations in the baseline fetal heart rate, determined in a 10 minute window while excluding accelerations and decelerations.

(Fetal Heart Rate Variability, NCI Thesaurus)

A unit of linear acceleration based on the U.S. Customary and British Imperial systems unit of length and equal to 0.3048 meter per second per second.

(Foot per Second Squared, NCI Thesaurus)

A unit of angular acceleration equivalent to the rate of change of angular velocity by one angular degree per second during one second period.

(Degree per Second Squared, NCI Thesaurus)

Finally, this knowledge management system will create new synergies within and among the fields of research, resulting in a dramatic acceleration of our progress against cancer.

(Cancer Informatics Infrastructure, NCI Thesaurus)

Acceleration of a chemical reaction induced by the presence of material that is chemically unchanged at the end of the reaction.

(Catalysis, NCI Thesaurus)

Upon intratumoral administration, coxsackievirus A21 targets and binds to intracellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) and decay acceleration factor (DAF), both cell surface molecules that are both overexpressed on certain malignant cells.

(Coxsackievirus A21, NCI Thesaurus)

Gal is a non-SI, CGS system unit of gravitational acceleration equal to one centimeter per second per second, named after Galileo.

(Gal, NCI Thesaurus)

A deprecated unit of force defined as a force that produces an acceleration equal to the acceleration of gravity when acting on a mass of one gram.

(Gram-Force, NCI Thesaurus)

Meter per second squared is a SI unit of acceleration.

(Meter per Second Squared, NCI Thesaurus)