ppl. a. [f. UNDULATE v.]
1. Moving after the manner of waves; rising and falling in (or like) waves.
1711. Pope, Temple Fame, 446. Thro’ undulating air the sounds are sent.
1758. Reid, trans. Macquer’s Chym., I. 268. From these cracks will issue undulating flames.
1816. Sir H. Douglas, Milit. Bridges, 70. The intervals must be considerable, and the balks be laid from boat to boat only, to admit of an undulating motion.
1820. W. Irving, Sketch Bk., I. 12. To watch the gently undulating billows, rolling their silver volumes.
a. 1874. in Coues, Birds N. W., 113. Its flight is in undulating lines, like the Crossbill’s.
b. transf. Of sounds.
1700. Dryden, Ovid’s Met., XII. 60. Whence all Things … thither bring their Undulating Sound.
1712. Blackmore, Creation, VII. 101. Mark how the spirits … Seize undulating sounds, and catch the vocal air.
1844. Kinglake, Eöthen, i. 6. Those well-undulating tones [of speech] which belong to the best Osmanlees.
c. fig. Exhibiting variations comparable to the rising and falling of waves.
1815. Bentham, Springs of Action, Wks. 1843, II. 202. The maintenance of discipline among the undulating and tumultuous multitude.
1849. De Morgan, Trigonometry & Double Algebra, 1. Trigonometry contains the science of continually undulating magnitude; meaning magnitude which becomes alternately greater and less, without any termination to succession of increase or decrease.
1898. P. Manson, Trop. Diseases, x. 182. Those cases [of Malta Fever] with well-marked waves of fever he calls ‘undulating.’
2. Forming a series of wave-like curves.
1728. Chambers, Cycl., s.v. Muscle, The Fibres … contract themselves into a wavy undulating kind of Surface.
1799. Kirwan, Geol. Ess., 369. The strata are parallel to each other, horizontal or undulating.
1846. Ellis, Elgin Marb., II. 23. The undulating flow given to every part of the drapery.
1884. Bower & Scott, De Bary’s Phaner., 366. The endodermis … only differs … in the undulating bands on its radial walls.
b. Of grounds, hills, etc.: Presenting a succession of gently rounded heights and hollows.
1794. Piozzi, Synon., II. 353. The wavy corn floats very beautifully upon the undulating downs.
1815. Elphinstone, Acc. Caubul, III. i. 351. It is an undulating plain, about twenty-five miles long.
1832. G. Downes, Lett. Cont. Countries, I. 451. The luxuriance of the region, into whose leafy and beautifully undulating bosom we were now to be immerged.
1873. Mrs. Brookfield, Not a Heroine, II. 262. Soft, undulating distant hills.
Hence Undulatingly adv.
1796. Kirwan, Elem. Min. (ed. 2), I. 85. In some places it was dark grey, and undulatingly slaty.
1835. Blackw. Mag., XXXVII. 341. The … line of thesky, that … plays undulatingly from and into the … deeper tones of the river’s visible bed.
