platonic solid

English - English

Definition of platonic solid in English English dictionary

Any one of the following five polyhedra: the regular tetrahedron, the cube, the regular octahedron, the regular dodecahedron and the regular icosahedron

also known as regular polyhedron Geometric solid all of whose faces are identical regular polygons and all of whose angles are equal. There are only five such polyhedrons. The cube is constructed from the square, the dodecahedron from the regular pentagon, and the tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron (with 20 faces) from the equilateral triangle. They are known as the Platonic solids because of Plato's attempt to relate each to one of the five elements that he believed formed the world

Related Terms

Platonic solids

plural form of Platonic solid

Hyphenation

Pla·to·nic sol·id

Turkish pronunciation

plıtänîk sälıd

Pronunciation

/pləˈtänək ˈsäləd/ /pləˈtɑːnɪk ˈsɑːləd/

Etymology

() Named after the Greek philosopher Plato, who wrote about these solids in his treatise Timaeus.