asymptote

plural asymptotes

1. mathematical analysisA straight line which a curve approaches arbitrarily closely as it goes to infinity. The limit of the curve; its tangent "at infinity".

   1 more example

   The King rushed forward with all his cruel coordinates and mean values, stumbled into a dark forest of roots and logarithms, had to backtrack, then encountered the beast on a field of irrational numbers (F₁) and smote it so grievously that it fell two decimal places and lost an epsilon, but the beast slid around an asymptote and hid in an n-dimensional orthogonal phase space, underwent expansion and came out, fuming factorially, and fell upon the King and hurt him passing sore.

   1974, Stanisław Lem, translated by Michael Kandel, The Cyberiad

2. broadlyfigurativelyAnything which comes near to but never meets something else.

   Language, in relation to thought, must ever be regarded as an asymptote.

   1860, Frederic William Farrar, An Essay on the Origin of Language, page 117

present singular third person asymptotes · participle present asymptoting · participle past asymptoted · past asymptoted

1. mathematical analysisTo approach, but never quite touch, a straight line, as something goes to infinity.

   2006: Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Perimeter of Ignorance As you become more scientific, yes, the religiosity drops off, but it asymptotes.