Definition of "parabola" [pa•rab•o•la]

• A plane curve formed by the intersection of a right circular cone and a plane parallel to an element of the cone or by the locus of points equidistant from a fixed line and a fixed point not on the line. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Terrified of boys and the showers … especially since I have actually witnessed one myself. barely missed me and the parabola is impressive."
• "Ms. Drugge, my 8th grade math teacher, was explaining that the model we were dissecting was called a parabola."
• "For example, Archimedes proved that the area of a section of a parabola is four-thirds the area of the triangle inside it (shown in red in the diagram below)."