[1] : The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

orthogonal \orthog"onal\, a. cf. f. orthogonal.
   right-angled; rectangular; as, an orthogonal intersection of
   one curve with another.
   1913 webster

   orthogonal projection. see under orthographic.
      1913 webster
see also:
orthogonal projection orthographic 

[2] : WordNet (r) 2.0

orthogonal
     adj 1: not pertinent to the matter under consideration; "an issue
            extraneous to the debate"; "the price was immaterial";
            "mentioned several impertinent facts before finally
            coming to the point" syn: extraneous, immaterial,
             impertinent
     2: statistically unrelated
     3: having a set of mutually perpendicular axes; meeting at
        right angles; "wind and sea may displace the ship's center
        of gravity along three orthogonal axes"; "a rectangular
        cartesian coordinate system" syn: rectangular
see also:
extraneous immaterial impertinent rectangular 

[3] : Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0

35 moby thesaurus words for "orthogonal":
   cube-shaped, cubed, cubic, cubiform, cuboid, diced, foursquare,
   normal, oblong, orthodiagonal, orthometric, perpendicular, plumb,
   plunging, precipitous, quadrangular, quadrate, quadriform,
   quadrilateral, rectangular, rhombic, rhomboid, right-angle,
   right-angled, right-angular, sheer, square, steep, straight-up,
   straight-up-and-down, tetragonal, tetrahedral, trapezohedral,
   trapezoid, up-and-down

[4] : Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)

orthogonal adj. from mathematics mutually independent; well
   separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. used in a generalization of its
   mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or capabilities
   that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the entire `capability
   space' of the system and are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually
   independent. for example, in architectures such as the pdp-11 or vax
   where all or nearly all registers can be used interchangeably in any
   role with respect to any instruction, the register set is said to be
   orthogonal. or, in logic, the set of operators `not' and `or' is
   orthogonal, but the set `nand', `or', and `not' is not because any one
   of these can be expressed in terms of the others. also used in comments
   on human discourse: "this may be orthogonal to the discussion, but...."

[5] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

orthogonal
     
         at 90 degrees right angles.
     
        n mutually orthogonal vectors span an n-dimensional
        vector space, meaning that, any vector in the space can be
        expressed as a linear combination of the vectors.  this is
        true of any set of n linearly independent vectors.
     
        the term is used loosely to mean mutually independent or well
        separated.  it is used to describe sets of primitives or
        capabilities that, like linearly independent vectors in
        geometry, span the entire "capability space" and are in some
        sense non-overlapping or mutually independent.  for example,
        in logic, the set of operators "not" and "or" is described as
        orthogonal, but the set "nand", "or", and "not" is not
        because any one of these can be expressed in terms of the
        others.
     
        also used loosely to mean "irrelevant to", e.g. "this may be
        orthogonal to the discussion, but ...", similar to "going off
        at a tangent".
     
        see also orthogonal instruction set.
     
        jargon file
     
        2002-12-02
     
     
see also:
vectors span vector space linear combination linearly independent orthogonal instruction set 
jargon file 

Orthogonal >> O Words
Orthogonal, definition of term: Orthogonal
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Orthogonal Inst >> O Words
Orthogonal Inst, definition of term: Orthogonal Inst
orthogonal+inst_pag1.html