Meanings
- not comparablemathematicsDescribes a travelling wave whose amplitude is constricted; e.g. a wave in shallow water.
Origin
Coined by Diederik Korteweg and Gustav de Vries in their paper in Philosophical Magazine (1895, series 5, vol. 39, pp. 422-443) to describe a class of solutions to the KdV equation which involve a Jacobi elliptic function. The Jacobi elliptic function involved is commonly written as cn(x|m), and the term cnoidal was designed to be analogous to sinusoidal, the word describing waves which involve the sine function.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
French cnoïdal
- cnoïdalTranslations
Italian cnoidale
- cnoidaleTranslations
Russian кноида́льный
- кноида́льный (knoidálʹnyj)Translations
Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
cnoidal. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cnoidal
“cnoidal.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cnoidal. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cnoidal,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cnoidal.
Source: cnoidal on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.