a. [f. mod.L. centrifug-us (Newton, f. centrum center + -fugus fleeing, avoiding) + -AL. (Cf. CENTRIPETAL). In mod.F. centrifuge.]
1. Flying or tending to fly off from the center as
a. Centrifugal force, also centrifugal tendency: the force with which a body moving round a center tends to fly off from that center; the tendency that a revolving body has to do this.
(‘Centrifugal force’ is really Inertia.)
[1687. Newton, Principia Sect., II. Prop. iv. Schol., Hæc est vis centrifuga, qua corpus urget circulum; et huic æqualis est vis contraria.]
a. 1721. Keill, Maupertuis’ Diss. (1734), 5. It is under the Equator that the Centrifugal Force is greatest.
1841–4. Emerson, Ess. Hist., Wks. (Bohn), I. 2. As the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces.
1855. Maury, Phys. Geog. Sea, i. (1860), 3. At the height of 26,000 miles from the earth, the centrifugal force would counteract gravity.
1866. Airy, Pop. Astron., 241. The centrifugal tendency is powerfully in operation at the equator, but not at all at the poles.
1876. Routledge, Discov., 7. If … the velocity of the engine increases, the balls diverge from increased centrifugal force.
b. fig. or transf.
1817. Coleridge, Biog. Lit., I. xii. 275.
1856. R. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), I. 93. A process of evolution, a centrifugal movement in the Divine Nature.
1868. G. Duff, Pol. Surv., 12. So strong are the centrifugal forces in Spain.
c. Centrifugal current: ‘applied to that arrangement of a battery in galvanizing an animal body, in which the positive pole is the nearer to the centre… of the nervous system’ (Syd. Soc. Lex.).
2. Applied to machines or parts of mechanism in which centrifugal force is employed: as † centrifugal bellows, a fan or blowing machine; centrifugal filter, a sugar-filter in which a porous cylinder rotates rapidly so as to drive off liquid from the sugar; centrifugal gun, a kind of machine-cannon with a rotating chambered disk whence balls are driven tangentially; centrifugal machine, gen. any machine in which centrifugal force is employed; spec. a machine, also called a hydro-extractor, for drying yarn, cloth, sugar, or other substance, this being placed in a rapidly revolving cage, whence the moisture is thrown off by centrifugal force; centrifugal mill, Barker’s mill; centrifugal pump, a rotary pump in which the fluid is driven outward and upward from a center; there are many forms of it; centrifugal dresser, etc.
1765. Gentl. Mag., 555. This centrifugal machine.
1803. Banks, Power Machines, 41. Centrifugal machine or Erskine’s centrifugal pump.
1807. T. Young, Nat. Philos. (1845), II. p. xxvi. The centrifugal bellows. By the revolution of the fly, the air is caused to enter at A, and is discharged at B.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., 514. Le Demour’s centrifugal pump is supposed to have been the first of its kind. Ibid., 515. Andrew’s centrifugal pump resembles a helix or snail’s shell.
1884. Bath Herald, 27 Dec., 6/5. After being carried through … detachers, the wheat passes through centrifugal dressers.
3. Bot. a. Of inflorescence, in which the terminal flower opens first and the lateral ones successively after; inflorescence terminal or definite. b. Of an embryo: Having the radicle turned toward the sides of the fruit. c. Said of the order of cell division.
1830. Lindley, Nat. Syst. Bot., 134. Flowers often with a centrifugal inflorescence.
1870. Hooker, Stud. Flora, 277. Labiatæ … Flowers solitary or in axillary opposite centrifugal cymes.
1884. Bower & Scott, De Bary’s Phaner. & Ferns, 545. In the course of the tangential divisions in an initial cell and the radial row derived from it, two extreme forms may in the first instance be distinguished … termed the centripetal and centrifugal forms.
4. Phys. Of nerve-fibers: Conveying impulses from a ‘center’ (see CENTRE sb. 7 a); efferent.
1855. H. Spencer, Princ. Psychol. (1872), I. V. vi. 568. The centre … from which issue through centrifugal nerves motor impulses.
1876. trans. Wagner’s Gen. Pathol., 20. The properties of centrifugal fibres.
