a. [ad. L. tabulār-is of or relating to a board or plate, f. tabula; now used in reference to many senses of TABLE.]
1. Having the form of a ‘table,’ tablet, or slab; flat and (usually) comparatively thin; consisting of, or tending to split into, pieces of this form, as a rock; of a short prismatic form with flat base and top, as a crystal; flat-topped, as a hill.
Tabular spar, a name for WOLLASTONITE, as occurring in masses of tabular structure, or rarely in tabular crystals.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Tabular, wherof boards, plancks, or tables may be made, long and large.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, II. 296/1. The Persian Pye … of a dusky color: the Feet bluish, with black tabular scales.
a. 1728. Woodward, Fossils (1729), I. 34. Nodules … that are tabular and plated.
1796. Kirwan, Elem. Min. (ed. 2), I. 36. The tabular [form] which consists of plates that grow thinner and sharp at the extremities.
1802. Playfair, Illustr. Hutton. Th., 295. A bed of tabular mass of whinstone … interposed between strata.
1821. R. Jameson, Man. Mineral., 229. Associated with quartz, tabular-spar, and iron-ore.
1826. Kirby & Sp., Entomol., IV. xlvi. 332. When it is elevated on a footstalk above the dorsolum, and forms a tabular or flat surface.
1830. Lindley, Nat. Syst. Bot., 210. The apex … is connected by a common tabular dilated stigma.
1850. R. G. Cumming, Hunter’s Life S. Afr. (1902), 144/2. Mr. Livingstone pointed out to me a range of tabular hills.
1875. Huxley, in Encycl. Brit., I. 130/2. Horizontal plates … which … constitute tabular dissepiments.
b. Painted on a ‘table’ or panel. rare.
1859. Gullick & Timbs, Paint., 305. The uses to which the tabular or wooden pictures were applied.
2. a. Entered in, or calculated by means of, a table or tables, as a number or quantity.
1710. Lond. Gaz., No. 4737/3. In this Book you have above forty thousand Tabular Numbers.
1806. Hutton, Course Math., I. 40. Hence, by the rule … .1 the tabular height. This being found in the first column of the table, the corresponding tabular area is .04088.
1837. Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sc. (1857), II. 224. Uranus still deviates from his tabular place.
b. of the nature of, or pertaining to, a table, scheme, or synopsis; arranged in the form of a table; set down in a systematic form, as in rows and columns.
1816. Bentham, Chrestom., 242. By means of a set of systematic and tabular diagrams.
1830. Herschel, Study Nat. Phil., II. vi. (1851), 182. A list of them in tabular order.
1832. Babbage, Econ. Manuf., xix. (ed. 3), 183. A tabular view of the time occupied by each process.
1876. C. M. Davies, Unorth. Lond., 67. Carefully elaborated tabular statements.
c. Printing. (a) Applied to matter set up in the form of tables (see table-work, TABLE sb. 22).
1771. Luckombe, Hist. Printing, 283. The curious method of Tabular Writing … is practised in England to greater perfection than in any other Nation.
1879. Lond. Compositors’ Sc. Prices. Tabular and Table Work is matter set up in three or more columns and reading across the page.
1899. Daily News, 11 Sept., 9/5. Compositor.—All-round jobbing, book, and tabular hand.
† (b) (Printing) from wooden blocks or tablets, on which the matter is cut. Obs. rare.
1816. Singer, Hist. Cards, II. 75. As far as regards tabular printing, there is no reason to doubt that the Europeans derived their knowledge of printing from the Chinese.
