Definition of Tangential
tangential (adjective) - of or relating to or acting along or in the direction of a tangent
View other definitions
How can tangential be used in a sentence?
The "tangential" CAD forms are like the photos in gossip magazines.
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nullStop giving these "tangential" characters more media time than they deserve.
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nullFRUEHLING -- There's another kind of tangential advertising that interests me.
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nullFRUEHLING -- Did you ever consider the problem of what I call tangential advertising?
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null"tangential" (25) - meaning that it did not enter the skull, but caused damage through contact.
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nullMR: The lyrics are kind of tangential, I think you can interpret a couple of things in that one.
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nullThe problem here is not about introducing other issues that may, at first, appear to be tangential.
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nullObama claimed that he "knew thousands of people" and then called his relationship with Ayers, "tangential".
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nullThey are here to bog us all down in tangential discussions that are (mostly) irrelevant to the topic at hand.
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nullSince comedy requires a tangential thought process, he was able to significantly expand his communication skills.
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nullBut enough of this nonsense, and irreverent tangential "asides;" let's get to the meat of the talking point itself:
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nullLet us break for one final etymology safari before we summarize all this tangential sleight-of-words into practical advice.
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nullIf that hyper world interacted in some tangential way with Main Street, then the bailout would perhaps help the entire country.
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nullGeorge Fletcher's leading book on law and loyalty sets contract-based loyalties aside as "tangential" to the core meaning of loyalty.
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nullAnd that is, I think Debbie Rowe's involvement is going to be very tangential, even though they're saying she's going to start seeing them.
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nullHe talked to anyone who might have something to add, however tangential, to his growing knowledge of sexual misconduct within Mormon culture.
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nullThe focus will be taken off of that every time we go into the psychics and Kronk and the cops -- you know, the P.I. And that ` s all tangential.
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nullHugo Keith, countered that the US connection to the London lawyer was "tangential", arguing that little of the alleged bribery took place in the US.
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nullInstead of thanking the contributors for their time and effort, he threatens to delete their comments because they are *** screech*** "tangential" to his
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nullIt formed as microscopic hemispheres rather than a flat plane, so that if applied to paper, it yielded a bonding surface of widely spaced tangential points.
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nullBut more than that, we wanted to make sure that the focus stayed exactly on where is Polly and not tangential questions about the family, et cetera, et cetera.
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nullIt will seem at times tangential and pointless but, I assure you, it builds a network of semantic associations that is designed to serve as a supportive net of words.
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nullSomehow, in all of the hours logged watching these blessed events, I missed the Snow Leopard's run, so I can't even lay claim to a tangential connection to Kwame Nkrumah Acheampong.
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nullThe "sharks circling" is the fact that whenever a geek starts working on a seemingly simple project, the sharks start circling and drawing them deeper into tangential intricacies and minutia.
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nullI know my sea salt purchase is hardly an economic stimulus package for Kiribati but I am hoping that the awareness that my menu creates may be worth something in some unforeseen tangential way.
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nullFinally, after all those months, I got a 2-paragraph reply from Randy, employing the unprepared debater's trick of refuting one tangential point, and ignoring the rest of the positions presented:
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nullThe campaign subplots have felt so tangential that making him the killer isn't likely to impress or satisfy the show's more vocal critics who at this point aren't likely to applaud any decision the writers make.
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nullHe felt a kind of tangential dislocation of time or space, and he had the eerie sensation that the two of them had somehow become locked in tandem, one engine, its power increasing geometrically, and he was immediately uneasy.
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nullAs I've said before, the Goldman Sachs issue is never going away for Whitman, try though her handlers might to say that she "missed the signposts" or equate her involvement with the far more tangential links to Poizner and Jerry Brown.
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nullAlready, some opponents of the proposal have attempted to cloud the issue by raising tangential questions regarding the definition of "brain death" -- inadvertently revealing their own hidden agenda, the prohibition of all cadaveric organ donation.
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nullThat legitimacy came from winning elections, as Jindal did in 2007, and through the tangential success of political operatives, said Parag Mehta, who attended many Desi Hour lunches and later worked as the Democratic Party's director of internal communications.
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nullUnfortunately, Reiss gets bogged down in tangential details while trying to place Nussimbaum in early 20th-century context, but this is still an important work that sheds light on the pre-Zionist phenomenon of Jewish Orientalism that led many Jews to embrace Muslim culture.
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nullLight rays lying in the tangential and sagittal planes are refracted differently and both sets of rays intersect the chief ray at different image points, termed the tangential line image (tangential focal plane) and the sagittal line image (sagittal focal plane; see Figure 2).
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nullInstead, Ireland's policy makers are on course for a painful deflationary spiral, largely by focusing on problems that are only tangential to the real economy, such as the commercial property sector, and by avoiding those that merit full attention, namely small and medium-size businesses.
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nullI spent most of my time hanging around the police station having off-the-record arguments and wasting whole afternoons at public records sitting at the long oak table, looking up things that were so tangential to the case that I wondered if I was trying to avoid what was right in front of me.
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nullHollywood is now getting more sophisticated with trailer marketing, and taking full advantage of the flexibility of social video to distribute "red band" racy or R-rated clips, long-form trailers, and subversive, funny, or tangential viral videos that are only lightly connected to a film along with their standard trailers to keep things interesting.
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Tips for Using tangential in a Sentence
You may have an easier time writing sentences with tangential if you know what words are likely to come before or after it, or simply what words are often found in the same sentence.
Frequent Predecessors
Words that often come before tangential in sentences. For example: "the tangential" or "and tangential"
- the
- and
- a
- of
- is
- in
- or
- are
- be
- by
Frequent Successors
Words that often come after tangential in sentences. For example: "tangential to" or "tangential velocity"
- to
- velocity
- component
- force
- and
- stress
- section
- components
- direction
- stresses
Associated Words
Words that aren't necessarily predecessors or successors, but are often found in the same sentence.
- quadrilateral
- trapezoid
- centripetal
- rhombus
- tangent
- polygon
- isosceles
- sagittal
- shrinkage
- circumscribed
Alternate Definitions
- tangential (adjective) - of or pertaining to a tangent; in the direction of a tangent
- tangential (adjective) - a force which acts on a moving body in the direction of a tangent to the path of the body, its effect being to increase or diminish the velocity; -- distinguished from a <ex>normal force</ex>, which acts at right angles to the tangent and changes the direction of the motion without changing the velocity
- tangential (adjective) - see <er>shear</er>, n., 3
