tesseract

English

Alternative forms

• tessaract

Etymology

From tessara- (“four-”) +‎ Ancient Greek ἀκτίς (aktís, “ray”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

tesseract (plural tesseracts)

1. (mathematics, geometry) The four-dimensional analogue of a cube; a 4D polytope bounded by eight cubes (analogously to the way a cube is bounded by six squares).
   • 1906, Charles Howard Hinton, The Fourth Dimension, S. Sonnenschein & Company, page 239:

     Hence the cube determined by these axes is the face of the tesseract which we now have before us.

   • 1910, Henry Parker Manning, The Fourth Dimension Simply Explained, Munn, Incorporated, page 93:

     […] then it would trace out a higher cube, or tesseract, and each of the six surrounding cubes, carried on in the same motion, would trace tesseracts also, […] .

2. (science fiction) Any of various fictional mechanisms that explain extradimensional, superluminal, or time travel outside the geometry of the physical universe.
   • 1962, Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, published 2019, unnumbered page:

     "I shall just sit down for a moment and pop on my boots and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract."

   • 2017 April 5, Mike O'Sullivan, Ohotmu Team, Marvel Cinematic Universe Guidebook: The Avengers Initiative, Marvel Entertainment, →ISBN:

     When the Tesseract's energy levels spiked, Selvig proved unable to stop it and Loki arrived on Earth via a Tesseract-created portal.

   • 2019 June 21, Marc Blancher, Marc Bonner, Colleen Boyle, Martin Butler, Jörg Hartmann, Alexander Hauk, Sophia Hauk, Thomas Hensel, Matthew H. Hersch, Ansgar Oswald, Nils Daniel Peiler, Umberto Rossi, We Are All Astronauts: The Image of the Space Traveler in Arts and Media, Neofelis Verlag, →ISBN, page 206:

     Cooper sees his younger self due to the tesseract in Interstellar.

Synonyms

• (analogue of a cube): four-dimensional hypercube, 4-cube, 8-cell, octachoron, tetracube

Hypernyms

• hypercube, polytope, polychoron

Derived terms

• tesseractic

Related terms

• tessera

Translations

four-dimensional analogue of a cube

Bulgarian: тесеракт (teserakt) Chinese: Mandarin: 四維超正方體 / 四维超正方体 (sìwéichāozhèngfāngtǐ), 正八胞體 / 正八胞体 (zhèngbābāotǐ) Czech: teserakt (cs) m Finnish: tesserakti (fi) French: tesseract (fr) German: Tesserakt (de) m Hindi: चतुरक्तु m (caturaktu) Icelandic: ferverpill (is) m, fjórvíður teningur m Japanese: 正八胞体 (せいはちほうたい, seihachihōtai) Macedonian: тесеракт m (teserakt) Polish: teserakt m Russian: тессеракт (ru) m (tesserakt) Spanish: teseracto m Swedish: tesserakt c

Further reading

• Tesseract on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Tesseract (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Tesseract on Wolfram MathWorld

Anagrams

• rascettes