Penrose tiles are a pair of simple quadrilaterals that, with a careful set of rules, tile the plane without allowing translational symmetry.—Quanta Magazine, 23 May 2023 Design chops: Located on the eastern end of the charming Brera neighborhood, close to the city’s famed fashion quadrilateral, the hotel is tucked away in an early 20th-century palazzo that until recently was the showroom and offices of designer Philipp Plein.—Jackie Cooperman, Robb Report, 9 Mar. 2023 There are yet more triangles and quadrilaterals of affection, not always clearly mapped in Bradshaw’s vigorous trimming of the text.—Jesse Green, New York Times, 28 Feb. 2023 Mathematicians recently discovered two quadrilaterals with that property — dartlike shapes with angle ratios of 1:1:1:9 and 1:1:2:8.—Quanta Magazine, 15 Aug. 2017 Our examples above use equilateral triangles (regular triangles), squares (regular quadrilaterals) and regular hexagons.—Quanta Magazine, 11 Dec. 2017 Finally, the scientists created quadrilaterals with different combinations of vertices.—Adrian Cho, Science | AAAS, 14 Oct. 2019 These presumably would have yielded more complicated configurations of objects in the sky today: triangular arrangements of galaxies, along with quadrilaterals, pentagons and other shapes.—Quanta Magazine, 29 Oct. 2019 Of the more than 65,000 possible quadrilaterals, only 140 of them would fold, the researchers found.—Adrian Cho, Science | AAAS, 14 Oct. 2019
Adjective
The quadrilateral grouping is one of a number of regional partnerships that Washington has used to push back against China’s assertiveness in Asia.—Peter Martin and Ben Westcott / Bloomberg, TIME, 3 May 2024 Trilateral and quadrilateral action could expand their capacity for disruption.—Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Foreign Affairs, 23 Apr. 2024 And at the same time, Iran, Iraq, Russia, and Syria created a quadrilateral intelligence center to coordinate the fight against the Islamic State (or ISIS), marking the beginning of intelligence sharing between Russia and the PMF (although the sharing was limited and had little effect).—Hamidreza Azizi, Foreign Affairs, 14 Feb. 2024 Other initiatives are pretty well new, such as a quadrilateral co-production agreement between the four countries of Mercosur: Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.—John Hopewell, Variety, 28 Nov. 2023 Surprisingly, every triangle can tile the plane, and even more surprisingly, so can every quadrilateral.—Quanta Magazine, 30 Oct. 2023 A number of rugs break free of the standard quadrilateral configuration, spilling into free-form shapes that call to mind a Brutalist MC Escher creation.—Zoey Poll Kin Woo Rima Suqi Zoey Poll Roxanne Fequiere Gisela Williams, New York Times, 14 Sep. 2023 If a quadrilateral sponge can live in a pineapple under the sea, a squirrel can wonder about the Moon Hoax.—Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 27 Aug. 2011 The four sides of romance make for a thoroughly beguiling quadrilateral love triangle.—oregonlive, 30 Oct. 2022
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'quadrilateral.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Etymology
Noun
Latin quadrilaterus four-sided, from quadri- + later-, latus side
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