English

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A three-dimensional projection of a tesseract.
 
A two-dimensional projection of a tesseract.

Etymology

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From tessara- (four-) +‎ Ancient Greek ἀκτίς (aktís, ray).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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tesseract (plural tesseracts)

  1. (mathematics, geometry) The four-dimensional analogue of a cube; a 4D polytope bounded by eight cubes (analogously to the way a cube is bounded by six squares).
    • 1906, Charles Howard Hinton, The Fourth Dimension, S. Sonnenschein & Company, page 239:
      Hence the cube determined by these axes is the face of the tesseract which we now have before us.
    • 1910, Henry Parker Manning, The Fourth Dimension Simply Explained, Munn, Incorporated, page 93:
      [] then it would trace out a higher cube, or tesseract, and each of the six surrounding cubes, carried on in the same motion, would trace tesseracts also, [] .
  2. (science fiction) Any of various fictional mechanisms that explain extradimensional, superluminal, or time travel outside the geometry of the physical universe.

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