simplex
Part of speech: adj
noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: algebraic-topology
anatomy
biology
communications
computing
electrical-engineering
engineering
genetics
geometry
grammar
human-sciences
linguistics
mathematics
medicine
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
telecommunications
topology
Etymology: The adjective is a learned borrowing from Latin simplex (“plain, simple; single”). The first part, sim-, comes from Proto-Indo-European *sem-, *sm̥- (“one; together”). The second part, -plex, may be from *pleḱ- (“to weave”).
The noun is derived from the adjective. The plural forms simplices and simplicia are learned borrowings from Latin simplicēs (masculine or feminine) and simplicia (neuter), respectively plural forms of simplex.
Noun sense 1 (“generalization of a triangle or tetrahedron to an arbitrary dimension”) was apparently coined by the Dutch mathematician Pieter Hendrik Schoute (1846–1913) as a short version of Simplicissimum in Mehrdimensionale Geometrie (in German, 1902). (In his pioneering works on algebraic topology, the French mathematician Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) had previously introduced the concept, but not the actual term simplex.)
Inflected forms:
form: simplexes
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: simplices
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: simplicia
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Having a single structure; not composite or complex; undivided, unitary.
pos: adj
tags: dated
not-comparable
gloss: Of an eye: (supposedly) having pigment on only the posterior surface of the iris and not the anterior surface, and thus appearing blue; this was later found to be inaccurate, as eye colour is due to the amount of pigment in the anterior surface of the iris; also, of eye pigmentation: present only on the posterior surface of the iris; and of a person: having eyes with this form of pigmentation.
pos: adj
tags: historical
not-comparable
gloss: Of a circuit or device: involving signals which travel in one direction at a time; unidirectional.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
gloss: Of a polyploid organism: having one dominant allele at a given locus on all homologous chromosomes.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
gloss: Synonym of heterozygous (“of an organism: having two different alleles in a given gene”).
pos: adj
tags: archaic
not-comparable
obsolete
gloss: Of a word: having no (derivational) affixes; simple, monomorphemic, uncompounded.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
gloss: Of an apartment (or, sometimes, another type of property): having only one floor or storey; single-storey.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
gloss: A generalization of a triangle or tetrahedron to an arbitrary dimension; more accurately, the convex hull of n+1 affinely independent points in n-dimensional space.
pos: noun
gloss: A word which is not compound and contains no derivational affixes (inflectional affixes are usually disregarded); a monomorphemic word.
pos: noun
examples: The word weak is a simplex. Its derivative weaken is not.
gloss: In full simplex sentence: in transformational grammar: a simple sentence which is the product of a few transformations; a kernel sentence.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
examples: The question is: is 139. [“Priexal Vanja. ‘arrived Vanya’”] a simplex or is it a cleft structure in which all 'superfluous' constituents were deleted. […] The only indication that 139. is a simplex is the sentence intonation and the absence of a break between the verb and the subject.
gloss: An apartment (or, sometimes, another type of property) having only one floor or storey; a single-storey property.
pos: noun
Synonyms: monoplex
Related words: crux simplex
herpes simplex
simplicial
simplicial complex
Derived words: nonsimplex
simplexity
cosimplex
hypersimplex
n-simplex
simplex method
subsimplex
Translations: