3  definitions  found 
 
  From  Webster's  Revised  Unabridged  Dictionary  (1913)  [web1913]: 
 
  Dual  \Du"al\,  a.  [L.  dualis,  fr  duo  two  See  {Two}.] 
  Expressing,  or  consisting  of  the  number  two  belonging  to 
  two  as  the  dual  number  of  nouns,  etc.,  in  Greek. 
 
  Here  you  have  one  half  of  our  dual  truth.  --Tyndall. 
 
  From  WordNet  r  1.6  [wn]: 
 
  dual 
  adj  1:  consisting  of  or  involving  two  parts  or  components  usually 
  in  pairs;  "an  egg  with  a  double  yolk";  "a  double 
  (binary)  star";  "double  doors";  "dual  controls  for 
  pilot  and  copilot";  "duple  (or  double)  time  consists 
  of  two  (or  a  multiple  of  two)  beats  to  a  measure" 
  [syn:  {double},  {duple}] 
  2:  having  more  than  one  decidedly  dissimilar  aspects  or 
  qualities;  "a  double  (or  dual)  role  for  an  actor";  "the 
  office  of  a  clergyman  is  twofold;  public  preaching  and 
  private  influence"-  R.W.Emerson;  "every  episode  has  its 
  double  and  treble  meaning"-Frederick  Harrison  [syn:  {double}, 
  {twofold},  {treble},  {threefold}] 
  3:  a  grammatical  number  category  referring  to  two  items  or 
  units  (as  opposed  to  one  item  (singular)  or  more  than  one 
  item  (plural));  "ancient  Greek  had  the  dual  form  but  it 
  has  merged  with  the  plural  form  in  modern  Greek" 
 
  From  The  Free  On-line  Dictionary  of  Computing  (13  Mar  01)  [foldoc]: 
 
  dual 
 
    Every  field  of  mathematics  has  a  different 
  meaning  of  dual.  Loosely,  where  there  is  some  binary  symmetry 
  of  a  theory,  the  image  of  what  you  look  at  normally  under  this 
  symmetry  is  referred  to  as  the  dual  of  your  normal  things 
 
  In  linear  algebra  for  example,  for  any  {vector  space}  V,  over 
  a  {field},  F,  the  vector  space  of  {linear  maps}  from  V  to  F  is 
  known  as  the  dual  of  V.  It  can  be  shown  that  if  V  is 
  finite-dimensional,  V  and  its  dual  are  {isomorphic}  (though  no 
  isomorphism  between  them  is  any  more  natural  than  any  other). 
 
  There  is  a  natural  {embedding}  of  any  vector  space  in  the  dual 
  of  its  dual: 
 
  V  ->  V'':  v  ->  (V':  w  ->  wv  :  F) 
 
  (x'  is  normally  written  as  x  with  a  horizontal  bar  above  it). 
  I.e.  v''  is  the  linear  map,  from  V'  to  F,  which  maps  any  w  to 
  the  scalar  obtained  by  applying  w  to  v.  In  short,  this 
  double-dual  mapping  simply  exchanges  the  roles  of  function  and 
  argument. 
 
  It  is  conventional,  when  talking  about  vectors  in  V,  to  refer 
  to  the  members  of  V'  as  covectors 
 
  (1997-03-16) 
 
 

browse words by letter
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
or search   thesauri dictionary search words