gibbous

Definition

Curved or bulged outward.

Etymology

From Middle English gibbous, from Latin gibbus (“humped, hunched”), probably cognate with cubō (“bend oneself, lie down”), Italian gobba (“humpback”), Ancient Greek κῡφός (kūphós, “humpback, bent”), κύβος (kúbos, “cube, vertebra”), Spanish giboso (“humped”). Also ultimately compare dialectal Norwegian keiv (“slanted, wrong”), German schief (“crooked, slanting”) and Dutch scheef (“crooked, slanting”).

Example Sentences

• "In fact, what these gibbous human shapes specially represented was ready money—money insistently ready [...]"
• "The moving moon, full, gibbous, or crescent-shaped, shone at last for the navigators of the eighteenth century like a luminous hand on the clock of heaven."
• "On December 7, 1972, the Apollo 17 astronauts took a photograph of a gibbous Earth at a distance of eighteen thousand miles from its surface."