Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Topographic study of a given place, especially the history of a region as indicated by its topography.
  • noun Medicine The anatomical structure of a specific area or part of the body.
  • noun The study of certain properties that do not change as geometric figures or spaces undergo continuous deformation. These properties include openness, nearness, connectedness, and continuity.
  • noun The underlying structure that gives rise to such properties for a given figure or space.
  • noun Computers The arrangement in which the nodes of a network are connected to each other.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The study and description of the localities in a particular district.
  • noun The art or method of assisting the memory by associating the objects to be remembered with some place which is well known.
  • noun A branch of geometry having reference to the modes of connection of lines and surfaces, but not to their shapes.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun rare The art of, or method for, assisting the memory by associating the thing or subject to be remembered with some place.
  • noun a branch of mathematics which studies the properties of geometrical forms which retain their identity under certain transformations, such as stretching or twisting, which are homeomorphic. See also topologist.
  • noun configuration, especially in three dimensions; -- used, e. g. of the configurations taken by macromolecules, such as superhelical DNA.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun mathematics A branch of mathematics studying those properties of a geometric figure or solid that are not changed by stretching, bending and similar homeomorphisms.
  • noun mathematics A collection τ of subsets of a set X such that the empty set and X are both members of τ and τ is closed under arbitrary unions and finite intersections.
  • noun medicine The anatomical structure of part of the body.
  • noun computing The arrangement of nodes in a communications network.
  • noun technology The properties of a particular technological embodiment that are not affected by differences in the physical layout or form of its application.
  • noun The topographical study of geographic locations or given places in relation to its history.
  • noun dated The art of, or method for, assisting the memory by associating the thing or subject to be remembered with some place.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun topographic study of a given place (especially the history of the place as indicated by its topography)
  • noun the configuration of a communication network
  • noun the study of anatomy based on regions or divisions of the body and emphasizing the relations between various structures (muscles and nerves and arteries etc.) in that region
  • noun the branch of pure mathematics that deals only with the properties of a figure X that hold for every figure into which X can be transformed with a one-to-one correspondence that is continuous in both directions

Etymologies

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  • Most commonly heard (by me) as a type of mathematics.

    February 29, 2008

  • One of the Century definitions ("The art or method of assisting the memory by associating the objects to be remembered with some place which is well known.") reminds me of a memory palace.

    August 15, 2022