Definition of "osculant" in English

adjective

1. Kissing; hence, touching or meeting; clinging.

2. (zoology) Adhering closely; applied to certain creeping animals, such as caterpillars.

3. (biology) Intermediate between two genera, groups, families, etc., and having some of the characteristics of each; interosculant.

   • The genera by which two families approximate are called osculant genera.

4. (Bantu linguistics) Intermediate between multiple potentially reconstructible protoforms, but having a mismatch in semantics or morphology that cannot be explained through regular patterns of change.

5. (geometry) Tangent, touching at a single point.

noun

1. (geometry) The point at which two tangent curves touch.

2. (algebra) The condition that the solution to a set of simultaneous quantics, is also the solution of the corresponding set of tangential quantics.

noun

1. (mathematics) a form of tacinvariant of hypersurfaces that have a point in common