spherical

adj

Etymology: English spheric [from Latin sphaericus, from Ancient Greek σφαιρικός (sphairikós)] + -al.

1. Shaped as a sphere; being a sphere.

   “The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone, essentially what today we might term a frameless magnifying glass or plain glass paperweight.”

2. Of, or pertaining to, spheres.
3. Of a coordinate system, specifying the location of a point in a plane by using a radius and two angles.
4. Of or relating to the heavenly orbs, or to the sphere or spheres in which, according to ancient astronomy and astrology, they were set.

   “Knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance.”

5. Of a multivariate probability distribution, to have a covariance matrix equal to the identity matrix up to a multiplicative factor.

   “a spherical Gaussian distribution”