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trapezium

UK/tɹəˈpiː.zi.əm/US/tɹæˈpi.zi.əm/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #15,226 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: trapezia

A trapezium is a four-sided shape with just one pair of parallel sides. The area of a trapezium, a trapezium shape, calculate the trapezium.

British and American definitions are swapped, which is a genuine and unhelpful trap: in Britain a trapezium has one pair of parallel sides and a trapezoid has none, and in America it is the other way round. The area is the average of the two parallel sides times the height. Note the trapezium rule, a method for estimating the area under a curve; and trapeze, which comes from the same four-sided shape.

Definitions of trapezium

  1. 1nountrapeziumA four-sided shape with one pair of parallel sides.C1

    “The area of a trapezium is about the average of the parallel sides times the height.”

    synonyms: trapezoid

trapezium is a four-sided shape.

Also accepted in games: trapezoid

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    trapezium

  2. English, today

    trapezium

Learned borrowing from Latin trapezium. a doublet of trapeze.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Light & Shadow, Shapes & Lines

Practise this word

trapezium in the wild

  • The lower trapezium has the smaller edge at the bottom of the skip bin, and a longer edge at the top.

    Skip (container)

  • Where there is an upper trapezium, it has the smaller edge at the top.

    Skip (container)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the trapezium family

trapeze

trapezium — used about once every 159,543 pages · #15,226 · point at the bar for the others