aspect ratio

[ as-pekt rey-shoh, rey--shee-oh ]

noun

1. Aeronautics. the ratio of the span of an airfoil to its mean chord.
2. Digital Technology, Television. the ratio of the width of an image to its height, usually a standard ratio such as 16 to 9 or 4 to 3.
3. Naval Architecture. the ratio of the height of a rudder to its fore-and-aft length.
4. Rocketry.
   1. Also called fineness ratio, the ratio of the mean diameter of the body of a rocket or missile to its length.
   2. the ratio of the length of the combustion chamber of a rocket motor to its diameter.

aspect ratio

noun

1. the ratio of width to height of the picture on a television or cinema screen
2. aeronautics the ratio of the span of a wing to its mean chord

Word History and Origins

Origin of aspect ratio¹

First recorded in 1905–10

Example Sentences

Since Cootie is so tall, everybody was like, “We should not do that wide aspect ratio.”

From Los Angeles Times

The reactions have been perhaps unexpected, because instead of going for laughs, the videos are cool, like really cool, serving as a portal to another era: when dance was more often improvisational and spontaneous, when people felt the beat and found the rhythm organically, moving without the constraints of a horizontal aspect ratio.

From New York Times

A wide aspect ratio and long lenses create emptiness around Monk, and then as scenes progress, the camera moves to “pan in all the chaos happening around him.”

From Los Angeles Times

As a way to symbolize a different perspective, Wang chose to shift the aspect ratio to a much wider landscape view, and she centers the episode on Hong Kong natives and migrant Filipino houseworkers who sit at the periphery of the lives of wealthy American expats.

From Los Angeles Times

"We found a way to synthesize low defect density, high quality, single phase cubic gallium nitride by using an aspect ratio phase trapping technique that the Bayram group has invented," explains Lee.

From Science Daily