the.com/elliptical
the machine that lets you run nowhere forever without your knees filing a complaint
means Shaped like or relating to an ellipse, or — of speech and writing — so compressed that words are left out, making the meaning oblique or hard to follow.
from From Greek 'elleipsis,' a 'falling short' or 'omission,' built from 'elleipein,' to leave out or come up short ('en-,' in, plus 'leipein,' to leave). Mathematicians borrowed it for the squashed circle whose curve 'falls short' of a true circle, and grammarians for sentences with words missing. The exercise machine is the newest cousin: its pedals trace a stretched, ellipse-like loop, so the name describes the path your feet take while going precisely nowhere.
- orbit origin
- Named for orbits, where planets trace ellipses not circles
- knee saver
- Zero impact, unlike running's body-weight pounding
- 1990s baby
- Invented in the early 90s, surprisingly recent
- focus points
- Every ellipse has two foci, not one center
- galaxy shape
- Elliptical galaxies hold the universe's oldest stars
milky way galaxy — our galaxy's shape is elliptical, classified as sa(s)b by astronomers
m87 galaxy — supergiant elliptical galaxy in virgo cluster, 53.5 million light-years away
elliptical orbit of mercury — most eccentric planet orbit in our solar system, varies 46-69.8 million km from sun