# vertical to



## beri

Does that mean perpendicular to?
Tenkyu


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## DDT

I really think so

DDT


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## Gil

beri said:
			
		

> Does that mean perpendicular to?
> Tenkyu



Non.  Une verticale tracée au-dessus d'un plancher qui n'est pas de niveau ne lui est pas perpendiculaire...

Par contre, un  verticale tracée au-dessus d'un plancher horizontal lui est perpendiculaire.

Je doute de la possibilité d'employer "vertical" avec "to" et j'aimerais avoir l'avis d'un aborilingue anglo.


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## beri

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=36359


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## Benjy

vertical to doesnt necessarily mean perpendicular. that's what gil is saying. in the example you give the two are synonymes. vertical just means straight up in the air. and in fact vertical to is a stupid thing to say as vertical is always vertical regardless of other surfaces lol


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## panjandrum

vertical is vertical - you don't get "vertical to"
likewise
horizontal is horizontal....

Of course, vertical is perpendicular to horizontal, and vice versa.


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## Amityville

Yes, vertical=perpendicular to the floor.. I think in geometry, they might call an upright vertical line a perpendicular.


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## Gil

Amityville said:
			
		

> Yes, vertical=perpendicular to the floor.. I think in geometry, they might call an upright vertical line a perpendicular.



They might even call the upright vertical line (provided the vertical is really upright) a perpendicular to the horizon.


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## timpeac

panjandrum said:
			
		

> vertical is vertical - you don't get "vertical to"
> likewise
> horizontal is horizontal....
> 
> Of course, vertical is perpendicular to horizontal, and vice versa.


 
What is it if you're on a spaceship then?


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## Cath.S.

The vertical line is an endless fall.


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## Gil

timpeac said:
			
		

> What is it if you're on a spaceship then?



The vertical is always perpendicular to the horizon...


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## Benjy

it would be a line which passes through the centre of the universe and though the point defined. and the horizontal plane would be defined as the plane normal to this line


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## timpeac

Gil said:
			
		

> The vertical is always perpendicular to the horizon...


What horizon?


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## timpeac

Benjy said:
			
		

> it would be a line which passes through the centre of the universe and though the point defined. and the horizontal plane would be defined as the plane normal to this line


 
Ah naturellement. What if there was a wormhole in the way?


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## Benjy

outside of the scope of this forum [read: i don't know smarty pants!!]  i think however we have adequately covered the definition of vertical so as to answer beri's question [read: evil abuse of power to avoid answering question]


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## Gil

egueule said:
			
		

> The vertical line is an endless fall.



Son origine serait le péché originel?


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## panjandrum

timpeac said:
			
		

> What is it if you're on a spaceship then?


In space, vertical is perpendicular to the horizontal.  Horizontal is parallel to the plane formed by the Disc.

You thought you had me there didn't you - HEH.


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## timpeac

panjandrum said:
			
		

> In space, vertical is perpendicular to the horizontal. Horizontal is parallel to the plane formed by the Disc.
> 
> You thought you had me there didn't you - HEH.


 
Is that the disc of the world carried on the back of a turtle?


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## panjandrum

De Chelonian Mobile


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## Amityville

Sci-fi is not my field (I don't actually have one) so I don't get your reference, Panjandrum,(do explain) but we're a sophisticated life-form and some of us operate in many dimensions. This post is just in brackets to keep Benjy sweet - I have heard perpendiculaire used in French to mean just at right angles never mind in which spatial plane but to take a non-up-down example  - the shed is perpendicular to the house. I don't think it is ever used as such in English, but always to mean upright or, as you might say, at right angles to the horizontal, which is the ground for earth-dwellers. Phuff, getting dizzy.


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## timpeac

Amityville said:
			
		

> Sci-fi is not my field (I don't actually have one) so I don't get your reference, Panjandrum,(do explain) but we're a sophisticated life-form and some of us operate in many dimensions. This post is just in brackets to keep Benjy sweet - I have heard perpendiculaire used in French to mean just at right angles never mind in which spatial plane but to take a non-up-down example - the shed is perpendicular to the house. I don't think it is ever used as such in English, but always to mean upright or, as you might say, at right angles to the horizontal, which is the ground for earth-dwellers. Phuff, getting dizzy.


 
Ouch, you're joking! The shed is perpendicular to the house! Well you live and learn.

By the way, I don't think perpendicular in English means something at right angles to the horizontal - for all the joking above that is the meaning of vertical - perpendicular in English does mean "at right angles" but in terms that "the right way up" is at right angles. So a satellite dish can be perpendicular to the wall it is on - because if you sat it on the floor its top is what is now horizontal with the floor along from the wall. A shed (in English) could not be perpendicular to the house because this would suggest that the shed was on its side with the roof and base vertical from the ground.

That is really interesting that in French it just suggests at right angles. Thanks for that


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## Amityville

I really have heard that said about the shed, no kidding, and more than once, but I am now wondering if it was just one person that I heard it from, I can't remember. Natives, arise !
Re the rest, am now even dizzier. Who would want to live in a house like that ? Some mad geometrist. The satellite dish isn't helping as it is curved in shape and tilted to receive, in accordance with the space-time continuum of multilateral space, bending infinitesimally ever outwards to capture the radio waves of the expanding universe...aargh

Tim: (I was hoping to be able to say this morning "ah, it makes sense now" but haven't got there yet.)
Don't you mean _parallel_ to the wall (at least the up-down part of its right-angle bracket would be parallel) ?


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## timpeac

Amityville said:
			
		

> I really have heard that said about the shed, no kidding, and more than once, but I am now wondering if it was just one person that I heard it from, I can't remember. Natives, arise !
> Re the rest, am now even dizzier. Who would want to live in a house like that ? Some mad geometrist. The satellite dish isn't helping as it is curved in shape and tilted to receive, in accordance with the space-time continuum of multilateral space, bending infinitesimally ever outwards to capture the radio waves of the expanding universe...aargh
> 
> Tim: (I was hoping to be able to say this morning "ah, it makes sense now" but haven't got there yet.)
> Don't you mean _parallel_ to the wall (at least the up-down part of its right-angle bracket would be parallel) ?


 
Sorry, I didn't mean to sow confusion. No I meant perpendicular in the sense that it "sticks out" from the wall. Maybe it's clearer in terms of a normal TV arial. If you put this on the roof then there is a certain part which is highest, the top of the arial. If you were to put this arial on the side of the house this part would now be sticking out from the side of the house parallel with the ground. I would say this arial is perpendicular to the wall. Has that made it clearer or worse?


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## panjandrum

As I have contributed to the confusion, I looked back and right enough, despite all the angles we have drawn in this thread, there isn't a clear, upright definition of perpendicular.

A is perpendicular to B if they are at right angles, 90degrees, pi/4 radians.  
It does not matter if they are horizontal, vertical or something in between.
The only thing that matters is that there is a right angle between them.


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## Gil

panjandrum said:
			
		

> As I have contributed to the confusion, I looked back and right enough, despite all the angles we have drawn in this thread, there isn't a clear, upright definition of perpendicular.
> 
> A is perpendicular to B if they are at right angles, 90degrees, pi/4 radians.
> It does not matter if they are horizontal, vertical or something in between.
> The only thing that matters is that there is a right angle between them.



... and A and B are neither sheds, nor "arials", nor aerials, but lines...


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## timpeac

panjandrum said:
			
		

> As I have contributed to the confusion, I looked back and right enough, despite all the angles we have drawn in this thread, there isn't a clear, upright definition of perpendicular.
> 
> A is perpendicular to B if they are at right angles, 90degrees, pi/4 radians.
> It does not matter if they are horizontal, vertical or something in between.
> The only thing that matters is that there is a right angle between them.


 
That is the mathematic definition certainly, but surely you're not suggesting you can say "the house and the shed are perpendicular to each other" in normal English?


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## beri

wow, people still mathematicking here


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## Amityville

beri, you're a native and you didn't tell us about perpendiculaire - quick, tell ! can you say the shed is perpendiculaire to the house ?


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## panjandrum

timpeac said:
			
		

> That is the mathematic definition certainly, but surely you're not suggesting you can say "the house and the shed are perpendicular to each other" in normal English?


Not quite, but certainly I would say that the shed was perpendicular to the house, the fence was perpendicular to the road, the hedge was perpendicular to the wall??
Could this be my once-upon-a-time civil engineering surveys haunting my use of English?


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## Benjy

i'm ok with the fence perpendicular to the road. but thats about it. for me the rest are just hum.. vertical?? parallel? not at right angles?


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## beri

er... we wouldn't say "l'abri de jardin est perpendiculaire à la maison", definately not.


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## Amityville

Thankyou for replying to my SOS - I am a little bit disappointed that but regard you as an authority so must accept it. (sorry, Tim, for misleading you)  What do you say for at 90° to something ? I have just seen perpendicular angle translated in the WR dictionary as la normale. That has to be a mathematical term.


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## beri

two segments or straight lines that cross at 90° are perpendicular


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## Benjy

Amityville said:
			
		

> Thankyou for replying to my SOS - I am a little bit disappointed that but regard you as an authority so must accept it. (sorry, Tim, for misleading you)  What do you say for at 90° to something ? I have just seen perpendicular angle translated in the WR dictionary as la normale. That has to be a mathematical term.



normal to is the same as perpendicular to. a plane has a normal. it is a line that is perpendicular to it


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## timpeac

panjandrum said:
			
		

> Not quite, but certainly I would say that the shed was perpendicular to the house, the fence was perpendicular to the road, the hedge was perpendicular to the wall??
> Could this be my once-upon-a-time civil engineering surveys haunting my use of English?


 
I think it must be. "The shed is perpendicular to the house" sounds very strange to me in any case.


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## Cath.S.

beri said:
			
		

> er... we wouldn't say "l'abri de jardin est perpendiculaire à la maison", defin*i*tely not.


Je confirme les dires de Beri.


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